2 out of 5

Director: Samuel Bayer

A dash above the Michael Bay horror retreads for giving a couple of its characters a sprinkle of intelligence here and there, the new Nightmare on Elm Street plays similarly to the recent Jason remake – some nice shots and visuals, a couple good gore splashes, tributes to the original series for fans, but all with an unbelievably tedious sheen that sucks away any purpose for the film beyond pretty faces and potential sequels. Jackie Haley is an excellent Freddie with some great makeup, but as Platinum Dunes apparently suspects that modern young movie-goers have no attention spans (and, admittedly, they might be correct), theres no sense of build to the character or violence, and so what couldve been a cool and creepy update of a classic character is, instead, a quickly-edited jump-cut growling thing that never gets to really spread its wings in the film. I always wonder why Michael Bay bothers attaching directors to these things. There are moments that show, perhaps, that the director had a vision or idea they were trying to achieve, but certainly all of these films go under a similar editing process, chopped up into repetitive narrative flashes and screechy music. As mentioned, a cut above the rest of this genre (no pun intended, seriously) thanks to not making every character a moron, but still nothing to really get excited about.