'Nightmare on Elm Street' remake is scarier than 1984 original

I finally got around to watching the 2010 remake of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and actually thought that this movie was scarier than the 1984 original.

Directed by Samuel Bayer, this movie was released in April 2010 and starred Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker and Kellan Lutz. It posted gross revenues of $115.7 million against a shooting budget of $35 million.

For those of you who haven’t seen this movie (or the 1984 original), it’s about a group of high school students who are stalked and killed in their dreams by disfigured villain, Freddy Krueger. Many of you will be familiar with Freddy, who has earned his place in pop culture thanks largely to the iconic razor-tipped glove he uses to dispatch his victims.

Interestingly, this is the first of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies not to star Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. In the remake, Freddy is played by Jackie Earle Haley (who played the character of “Rorschach” in the movie, “Watchmen.”)

Englund and Haley also portray the Freddy character in much different fashions. Englund’s Freddy was more cartoonish and was full of one-liners. Haley’s Freddy was a darker, more sinister, more malevolent version of the character, and I believe that this is what made the remake scarier. Haley had big shoes to fill, but he pulled it off nicely.

The fact that Haley got picked to play Freddy in the first place was more than a little strange when you consider that during auditions for the original film in 1984, the now world famous Johnny Depp went with Haley to the auditions. Haley tried out for a part, but Depp got it instead after he caught the eye of director Wes Craven, who asked Depp to read for a part. Depp went on to appear in the original, but Haley didn’t get a part in the movie. The rest, as they say, for Depp is history.

Anyone who has seen both movies will notice right away that the two Freddys look a little different. According to promotional material for the remake, the movie’s make-up artists and special effects folks went out of their way to make the new Freddy look more like an actual burn victim.

Aside from his razor-tipped glove, Freddy’s also seen in the remake sporting his trademark crimson and black-stripped sweater. One interesting bit of trivia about Freddy’s sweater in the new movie is that was knitted by a woman named Judy Graham, who knitted the sweater for Freddy in the original movie.

In the end, I enjoyed watching this remake and hope that there are plans in the works for remakes of the other “Nightmare” films. For more information about this movie, visit its official Web site at www.nightmareonelmstreet.com/dvd.