It has now been over sixteen years since audiences were able to see Freddy Krueger wreak fresh havoc on the big screen. The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise’s last outing was the Samuel Bayer-directed Platinum Dunes remake from 2010, which performed well-enough at the box office but was savaged by critics and longtime fans of the franchise alike. While it is a new installment in the works (or multiple, if accounts of Paramount and Warner Bros. mounting separate conflicting productions ahead of the attempted merger is to be believed), there’s one thing that any new film is going to have an near-impossible task in doing, and that is finding a new Freddy.
The Springwood Slasher was played for decades by the iconic Robert Englund, who originated the role back when he was just ‘Fred Krueger’ in Wes Craven’s 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street. In the years that followed, Englund continued to return for each new appearance, all the way up to 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason. However, when Platinum Dunes decided to mount production on a remake, inspired by the significant commercial success they had found by taking the same approach for films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, the execs opted to recast Krueger for the very first time.
In Englund’s place was Jackie Earl Haley, a remarkable and gravitas-laden performer who was coming off of his scene-stealing work in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen when he was brought in to don the bladed glove. Now, for the first time in several years, in a recent podcast appearance, Haley is speaking openly about his experiences on the film.
In speaking about boarding the film and why the role enticed him, Haley said, “They were going in for a higher-end thing with the production. I think they had a good budget. And Sam Bayer had a great sense of … [he’s] a really good DP. He wasn’t the DP, but as a director, he knew to get really cool shots and stuff.”
He went on to further explain that, “Talking with Sam, it was just, it really seemed that they wanted to go back to the roots of a scary Freddy, of a dark Freddy. So I just really tried to own the sense of, ‘All right, let’s take this guy…,’ and I think that’s how Freddy started out in that first one. They darkened him up a little bit more. I think it would have been cool had they not quite done that. I think that was the whole idea, is to try to give a lot of what the first movie was but put a modern adaptation to it.”
Interestingly, at the time, with horror as a genre trending more dark and grounded, the more comedic versions of Freddy that had become prevalent in the latter sequels were viewed as something to rebel against. Now, the opposite is true; with fans clamoring for the new take on the character to allow him to be a bit goofy again, partially in response to just how seriously the 2010 remake’s version took himself.
In discussing the actual appearance of the character, something that has caught a lot of flack over the years, Haley said, “I thought they did a great job with the makeup. I think the movie’s caught on a little bit more with the younger people who aren’t so attached to the first one. But you’ve got people that just hate it, but there’s a lot of people that love it just because it looks more realistic. It looks like this guy got burned.”
All in all, I do think it’s a shame that Haley didn’t get a fair shake as Freddy Krueger. The film was less than stellar and not even a patch on Craven’s original, but Haley is a remarkable performer who could have been an ideal fit for a new Freddy. Nonetheless, it will be absolutely fascinating to see who any new take on Nightmare will rope in to try and fill these enormous horror icon shoes.
Add us as a preferred source on Google