Corner of Nightmare and Elm

Have you ever seen a Nightmare film? Then you've seen this one then! They are "rebooting the franchise", but aside from one motivational point, this is exactly the same Nightmare style film as we've already seen. Only without Robert Englund.

Following the bouncing ball with me: the story is that kids are dying, and it turns out that a "Freddy" is involved, and that the parents are to blame. Quelle surprise. And although scares are tried, you expect Freddy to pop up when they are dreaming (and I always assumed they were dreaming), so he didn't get many working 'boo' moment.

But wait, you say, who cares? This is a slasher pic, right? Surely we are only seeing it for the slashing and the knifing and the big dream sequences? Well, that just shows you aren't in tune with the out-of-tune Hollywood scene. We must care about the kids that are there to be sliced up, so we are treated to dramatic emotional moments of characters sharing their lives that take me back to Dawson's Creek (at least, what I imagine Dawson's Creek is like, I never actually watched it). Kid soap opera either way.

And as for the big dream sequences, ha! That would cost money, and why would anyone want to spend that. Instead, just pick one or two unrelated sets and use those instead, over and over.

Jackie Earle Haley is doesn't quite capture the menace of Robert (they get the eyes wrong, so he seems alien instead of creepy human). And the rest of the cast hang around and get killed without making any impressions at all.

This feels more like a conglomeration of Freddy movies than anything new, but at least they got away from the over-evolved plot line. Until the sequel that is...

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