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Where’s
the bloody good fun? A Nightmare on Elm Street.
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Slash
and Burn
By
John Brodeur
A
Nightmare on Elm Street
Directed
by Samuel Bayer
1984’s
A Nightmare on Elm Street held a special place in the
hearts and minds of a particular generation. Teenagers far
and wide lined up to take in a film that blurred the line
between fantasy and reality, with a protagonist in Freddy
Krueger whose only purpose was to leave a trail of pretty
young corpses. And Robert Englund’s sinister-but-snarky Krueger
became a cultural icon. If you were a teenage boy in the 1980s,
you dressed as Freddy for Halloween at least once; even today
when we see someone wearing a top with chunky horizontal stripes,
we call it a “Freddy Krueger sweater.”
Of course the franchise also helped fast-track the slasher
genre’s shift to pure camp, the unwitting connector between
Michael Myers and Chucky. And the original Nightmare
wasn’t exactly high art, either: Save a star-making turn from
Englund (though he never had a big- ticket leading role outside
of a Nightmare film, he was an awfully familiar disfigured
face for two decades), it was memorable only for a few iconic
kill scenes.
What this is all getting at is there’s more riding on Samuel
Bayer’s Nightmare remake than you might have thought.
This film has actual cultural significance. Really.
So maybe Bayer isn’t to be blamed for treating his debut feature
(after 20 years of directing music videos) with kid gloves—this
Nightmare certainly won’t go down as the biggest
P.O.S. in the illustrious canon of horror-flick franchise
reboots. But the bar is mighty low: Indeed, this is a watered-down,
SVU’d-up (Freddy’s a molester now, not a murderer) hull
of the original. With a budget nearly 20 times that of the
first Nightmare, Bayer’s picture doesn’t even manage
to out-gore its source—for some reason, he skimps where it
really counts. Might have been best to skip the CGI and go
back to the well of Red No. 5.
The plot is roughly the same, but its few thrills and updates
are weak and expected. Here, the corpses-to-be are played
by such no-name actors as Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy and Kyle
Gallner, and the role of Krueger is played by Jackie Earle
Haley—a fine actor whose skills are of little use here. Haley’s
stuck in the low grumble of his Rorschach from last year’s
Watchmen, and given nary a decent one-liner. He’s creepy
and gross—which is fine—but he’s not even funny?
This is not the Freddy we signed up for.
Animal
Cruelties
Furry
Vengeance
Directed
by Roger Kumble
My editor is calling me, wondering, at the 11th hour, where
is my review? Can we expect it, like, now? How difficult can
it be, when you’ve been doing weekly reviews for nigh on 20
years? Houston, do we have a problem?
I can’t blame family emergency, or the typical lunacy of a
two working parent/four kid schedule, for the snail’s length
pace this review took getting to the proper authorities. No,
it was simply a sheer case of not wishing to relive what had
to have been among the most painful 92 minutes of my entire
life. This includes the time I was in labor with my eldest,
and the Catholic hospital took a really long time getting
me the pre-approved epidural. Furry Vengeance, ostensibly
a pro-green, anti-development family film, is essentially
an homage to crotch shots and, literally, ball busting. Apparently,
the environmentally friendly bit has to do with the fact that
those implementing said tortures are (poorly animated) woodland
critters, who are merely trying to save their preserve from
the likes of builder Dan Sanders (Brendan Fraser). And so,
we have Dan getting sprayed by skunks. Chased by bears with
underwear (don’t ask). Bitten and nibbled and gnawed on by
raccoons, and other animals that don’t properly exist in the
American wilderness.
It’s an absolutely mind-numbing experience, making me re-think
my unwillingness to give Alvin and the Chipmunks a
fair chance. On top of the utter badness of the entire movie,
which actually took two numbskulls by the names of Michael
Carnes and Josh Gilbert to pen, is the simple tragedy of Brendan
Fraser. Granted, he got his start in gen-x’r flicks like School
Ties and Encino Man. But his stellar turn in Gods
and Monsters gave his acting career legs, The Mummy
gave him matinee panache, and the fact of George and the
Jungle simply made him look like a good sport. Since then,
though, he’s meandered on autopilot, appearing in trash like
the Mummy sequels and GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.
Now, Furry Vengeance, in which he looks bloated and
desperate. He shares most of his screen time with a marauding
raccoon, and some of it suspended in a port-o-john. It had
to have been a rough shoot, but no more so than having to
sit through the finished product.
—Laura
Leon
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