"I can't believe that there's a nightmare

on my street!"

The remake, or rather, reimagining of A Nightmare on Elm Street was pretty great. Reviewers will tell you otherwise, though, but that isn't something rare to the genre. It's pretty much expected.

It was by no means perfect, and in my mind didn't quite live up to the original, but the 1984 version of the film is kind of wedged into my heart pretty deep. Haley did not fall short as Freddy, and as a matter of fact, I'd say he did a fucking fantastic job. My issues with the film as a whole are somewhat 'minor', but they're enough to make a stark difference in my mind. For example, I had been led to believe that one of the biggest reasons for doing this reboot was to get Freddy away from being a wise-cracking killer. They do a good job of that, until the end of the film where Kruger gets a little dialogue heavy and starts to have that air of Englund about him.. the only difference being that it feels a lot more out of place with this Freddy than it ever did with Englund.

The first half of the movie literally had my heart racing, which almost never happens, and if it does, it's not for the length of time that it was. The suspense building that others will criticize as being 'expected and tired' is something that I applaud as feeling fresh. Part of that might be my knowing and expecting characters to die at a certain point, but that feeling should have been there with everyone, having seen the original or not. It's kind of just a goddamn genre thing. It got to me, and that doesn't fucking happen anymore, so I really just loved feeling uncomfortable again, like when I was a kid. Maybe it was just me though?

Of my two big problems with film, one was the use of CG at two particular parts that.. were really unnecessary. They should have just used spandex like they did in '84, and it would have looked great and been real. The other issue, and this might be a spoiler, is that the homage-death for our Tina character was very lackluster when compared to the original. I love watching a girl float around a room and get throw into the walls to the sounds of her back breaking just as much as the next guy, but.. I feel like I would have loved watching her get drug around the room in a far darker, bloodier, grisly mess (GRANTED this trick was done in the original movie and then AGAIN in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but still.. the part felt like it wanted to be that scene, but didn't hit the mark).

So other than being a nit-picky fan-boy? Pretty great. I'd love to hear what other fans of the series, and genre, thought of it.