movie: A Nightmare On Elm Street

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I said I'd update this on Wednesday. Today is Wednesday, and I actually AM updating! This is one for the history books, you guys.

haha ok anyway, here's my review/write up of A Nightmare On Elm Street. As always, this CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE. Don't want spoilers? Then don't read this. <3

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What to say about “A Nightmare on Elm Street”? I wasn’t sure what to expect of this movie. I’ve never seen the original (though after seeing the remake, I want to see the original to see how the remake hold up compared to it) and, surprisingly enough, I hadn’t bothered to even look up the plot or anything... so I went into this movie knowing nothing about it.

I absolutely LOVED the opening credits; they were just so well done. They were creepy, but not too creepy - just a little scary. They were dark (feeling-wise, not color-wise. Though, color-wise they were dark too, but just the feeling they gave off was so dark) and just so... so... beautiful.

The scene with Nancy in the bath, just the raw, open, vulnerability of being naked really showed so much. She’s tired. She’s scared. She has no clue what to do, and that’s killing her inside. She has the burning need to know, and not just because she’ll die if she doesn’t. She seems to be the smartest character in the movie. And the angle of the shot when Freddy’s knife-hand is coming up to grab her, to kill her is so perfect. You see her, so weak but not ready to give up, and you see him ready to overpower her. She doesn’t even notice him, yet she’s almost, almost giving in to him before Quentin calls her and jerks her back to her senses. It’s so well done, and really it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

All the scenes taking place in the basement were so... I don’t even know. I just loved the coloring. The darkness in contrast with the yellow light, wow, I loved it so much. My sister thinks I’m crazy for being so in love with the contrast coloring in the basement scenes. “It’s a sketchy basement!” she said to me. I guess she just doesn’t understand. Maybe I’ll be some sort of interior designer or something when I get older. Ya know, along with being a kindergarten teacher and film editor. It’ll all happen someday.

Oh my gosh, and the very end scene. When Nancy and her mother walk into their house, the moon is shining so brightly down on the house and you’d almost have a safe feeling. But you don’t have a safe, secure feeling because the way the shadows of the trees are falling down on the roof of the house, it seems to suggest that this (no pun intended, I promise) nightmare isn’t yet over.

Ok, I’ll shut up for now about the way the movie looked. The acting was so good, some of the best I’ve seen in a horror film for a while now. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect, but no movie ever is. I was so caught up in the story. Movies without character development (or with very little character development) bother me because you don’t get to know the characters before the movie ends (or the character dies). One of the reasons I liked this movie as much as I did was because you did get to know the characters, but not too much. When a character died, you didn’t know them well enough for it to feel like the death of a friend, but you did know them well enough for it to at least affect you a little.

For the most part, the actors connected really well on screen. The scene at Dean’s funeral, when Kris is telling Jesse it was like someone was making Dean kill himself (even though it looked like there was no one else there), and Nancy says she knows what Kris is talking about... the connection between the two girls in that scene is so real and so captivating, you really feel for them. The Jesse ruins the moment by making Nancy leave. The actress that plays Nancy is a really great actress. With her always listening to music and her drawings/paintings, she seemed disconnected from this world, and yet she connected SO well with every other character, it was almost unreal.

I was not impressed by the actor who plays Jesse. He just felt kind of off to me and it felt (to me) like he was trying too hard to be something he’s not. With the exception of his scene with Nancy, right after Kris’ death, all his scenes felt forced and unnatural. I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything else before this, so I don’t know. Maybe that was his character. Maybe he’s just not that good of an actor. I really don’t know.

The names I recognized in the opening credits were Kellan Lutz (Dean) and Kyle Gallner (Quentin). I wasn’t super-excited about seeing Kellan’s name. The only other thing I’ve seen him in is Twilight, and I don’t think too highly of those movies. So my thought was “Oh. Great. A twilight actor... What were they thinking?” But, apparently he CAN act. I was pleasantly surprised at that fact. After the movie I had to look up who Kellan played because I didn’t recognize him. (I’m not a huge fan of his, so I was expecting to see his Twilight character.) I was really happy to see Kyle Gallner’s name. He is such a great actor, and it’s awesome to see him more on the big screen. The first movie I saw him in was Jennifer’s Body, and I fell in love with his character. After seeing Jennifer’s Body, I saw The Haunting In Connecticut, and he was amazing in that movie too. For The Haunting In Connecticut, even though I didn’t like the movie at all, I did like his acting. So, yeah, I’m a fan of his work and I think it’s awesome to see him in more movies.

Kyle’s character, Quentin, was also one of the smarter ones in the movie (and no, not just because he didn’t die). The scene with him in the library, after he falls asleep and is dreaming is great. You see him and in the background you see all the books around him. There are so many books, almost seeming to suggest that he has a near infinite knowledge of what is going on. Then, the picture focuses on him, and you’re forced to pay attention to him and that’s when you really see the clear pain, fear, and knowledge in his eyes. Also kind of hinting towards his knowledge of every thing happening is his phone call to Nancy right before she is almost killed by Freddy in the bath. It could just be coincidence that he calls at the right time, but I prefer to think he somehow knew (without even knowing he knew) he had to call her right at that time. His eyes are so expressive, you can look at his eyes at any point in the movie and just know how he’s really, truly feeling. And that’s amazing. Throughout the whole movie he seems to know more than he thinks he does; but he doesn’t know he knows it, and that’s what is so great about it. He’s figuring this all out just as we, the viewers are, but in a sense he already knows. He was my favorite character.

I felt that the movie itself relied a little too heavily on sound-trick. It would be really quiet, and even the people in the theater were quiet, waiting for something to happen, and then the bad guy (in this case, Freddy) appears accompanied by a loud noise. The audience jumps more in response to the sudden loud noise than to the arrival of Freddy. Sound-trick is so typical Hollywood horror that it’s almost a bit boring. I would rather be scared by something that is scary because it could be real and could happen to anyone. I like scary movies that mess with your mind, and you think about them for days afterward. Anyone know any movies out there like that? Let me know. Anyway, the movie really wasn’t scary if you think about it. It was just all sound-trick.

Since I hadn’t seen the original and didn’t know anything about what the movie was about, I was pretty caught up in the idea of the story. The whole “if you die in your sleep, you die in real life” concept was interesting to me. And I liked that the dreams were, partly at least, suppressed memories of what had happened to the kids at preschool. I liked how Freddy showed them what he wanted them to know (Quentin’s dream where he saw the parents of the preschoolers burn Freddy alive) to try to trick them into turning against their parents (Quentin telling off his dad for killing an “innocent” man). I just loved the way Freddy played with their minds and really messed with them.

I want to see this movie again sometime, maybe a Friday night so there will be more of an audience (and therefore more of an audience-reaction) in the theater. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but watching the movie, I felt like there was something missing, something that could have been added but wasn’t. I think seeing it again might help me to figure out what it is that isn’t there.

The acting, for the most part, was amazing. Whoever did the casting picked a perfect cast. I love whoever was in charge of picking filming locations and making them look the way they did. Did the original version rely as heavily on sound-trick as the remake did? If not, they should have used whatever scare tactic the original used. And if the original did use a lot of sound-trick, then I guess I can’t say anything about how much the remake did.

Overall, I give it 6.5 / 10 stars. If you like typical Hollywood horror, you’ll probably like this. If you’re a fan of Kyle Gallner, definitely go to see it; you won’t be disappointed at all with his performance. If you’re looking for a cheap (depending on how much it costs to see a movie by you) scare, go to see it with an open mind, prepared to jump but not to be really scared. If you’re looking for a really good scare, I don’t recommend seeing it. Decide for yourself though, and if you end up seeing it let me know what you thought of it.
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With money the way it is right now, it's not very likely that I'll be seeing a movie this weekend. No movie over the weekend means no review/write up on Wednesday. I'll let you guys know probably on Sunday night if you can expect a review Wednesday or not.