Why We Need a New ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’
By Jeremy Dick
Horror movies aren’t safe from the recent Hollywood obsession of remaking and rebooting film franchises. That is certainly evident with Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees both having new projects on the horizon. Now, Freddy Krueger has tossed his clawed-glove into the hat.
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Apparently, New Line has announced another reboot for the 1984 classic film, A Nightmare on Elm Street. The project is intended to be an original remake of the first film, meaning that the 2010 remake starring Jackie Earle Haley will be ignored. No director has yet been attached, but Orphan scribe David Leslie Johnson will be penning the script.
While some other fans are excited about the idea of a new Freddy flick, it’s easy to see how not everyone is sold. You’ll always have the die-hard fans of the original films who’ll prefer to keep the classics as they are. There are others who were open to a reboot of the series, who may have since been scared away from that idea after the abysmal attempt in 2010.
However, while I am getting tired of the abundance of remakes and reboots coming out in theaters, I’d say that this is one franchise that truly needs it. Yes, 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was a complete failure, but that was more because the film was badly made and rather boring. We are much better off brushing that one under the rug and trying the idea again, hopefully with a writer and director team that better understands what it was that made the original so great.
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With today’s advancements in technology and digital imagery, A Nightmare on Elm Street is actually a great choice as a new film to tackle. The nightmare scenes in particular could be made to seem pretty surreal and horrifying, if done right. New Line is no doubt familiar with the negative feedback the 2010 reboot has garnered, so hopefully those complaints will help determine the hiring of a better team for this project.
I can’t say for certain that a new Nightmare film would be good, but I feel like I can say with confidence that it will, at the least, be better than the previous attempt. For that reason alone, it makes it worth it to try again, so as not to leave the series on such a down note. But, for what it’s worth, I do feel like an updated version of the classic horror film could be great, and it’s more likely to be so this time around if the production company has learned from their mistakes.