This is a decent enough remake with enough changes to make it interesting. It begins with a teenager trying to stay awake in a diner, explaining to his girlfriend that he's having these horrible nightmares. Then he falls asleep and Freddy gets him with his knife glove, though it looks as it the guy is simply killing himself. Then the girlfriend (Katie Cassidy) begins having dreams that Freddy is after her. When she confides to her boyfriend Jesse (Thomas Dekker) about them he says he's dreaming about the same freakish guy. And then there's a similar, though less effective scene than in the original with her being thrown around the room before she lands in her bed, dead, all bloody.
Then there is the loner, Nancy, and her friend Quentin who do some research and discover that all of the teenagers who died all went to the same preschool together, including them. When Nancy asks her mother she denies it, though ends up spilling the beans about the terrible things he did. He lived in the basement of the preschool and abused the children. Then Quentin has a nightmare about how they tracked down Krueger to an old factory and burned him alive. At first Quentin and Nancy think that the parents overreacted and that Freddy is killing everyone because he was actually innocent. Yet, when they find his hidden room where he took the children this all changes --and they end up remembering what Freddy did to them. So there's a bit more psychological depth to the characters in this version.
Jackie Earle Haley does a great job as the new Freddy, especially in his malevolence as the character. However, I found the CGI effects a bit too distracting, such as them making it look like part of his face is actually gone. And the CGI shape of him emerging from the bedroom wall doesn't have nearly the impact as a physical special effect. The biggest distraction are all the "kids", who clearly appear to be in their mid twenties, not teenagers. While I found A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET interesting I wasn't creeped out like I was when I saw the original in a theater. I didn't like it nearly as much as the TEXAS CHAINSAW or FRIDAY THE 13th Remakes.
This is a decent enough remake with enough changes to make it interesting. It begins with a teenager trying to stay awake in a diner, explaining to his girlfriend that he's having these horrible nightmares. Then he falls asleep and Freddy gets him with his knife glove, though it looks as it the guy is simply killing himself. Then the girlfriend (Katie Cassidy) begins having dreams that Freddy is after her. When she confides to her boyfriend Jesse (Thomas Dekker) about them he says he's dreaming about the same freakish guy. And then there's a similar, though less effective scene than in the original with her being thrown around the room before she lands in her bed, dead, all bloody.
