Viking Night: A Nightmare on Elm Street

By Bruce Hall

September 8, 2015

I dunno, Freddy seems nice.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
The parents, of course, are all quite familiar with Freddy, and reluctantly share what they know at one point in the film. But the kids remain more or less on their own when it comes to dealing with the problem. What I took from this is that while these parents are no doubt still grieving for the kids they lost, they all seem to be extraordinarily shitty parents to begin with. So, now that Freddy is back in action, it’s hard not to see him as doing these children a favor, in a way. Maybe he’s less of a villain then some kind of supernatural Dr. Kevorkian for disaffected teens. it’s also hard to believe that even the youngest members of this community didn’t already know about the distinctly dressed madman who brutally sliced up almost two dozen of their peers less than a generation ago - but if you’re willing to accept the story’s internal logic up to this point, I can’t imagine you’d be in the mood to complain. In the end, as with any slasher movie, the biggest issue you’re going to walk away with is the acting.

For the most part, it’s about what you’d expect from a slasher picture. Veteran actors like Saxon are able to phone it in without issue, and a talented up and comer like Depp clearly was not challenged. My main problem is with the main character - while I’m sure Heather Langenkamp is a nice person, watching her try to act is like watching a three legged cat try to use the sandbox without falling on its face. When part of you is kind of hoping for the protagonist to be put out of her misery, it doesn’t bode well for the story. And to make things worse, there’s an angry looking zit on her forehead that appears and disappears at random points throughout the movie, drawing unnecessary attention to the continuity in a film that doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny as it is.




Advertisement



Still, she gets off the best line in the film when her father contemptuously describes Rod as a "delinquent lunatic,” and she responds (without a trace of irony) “Rod is not a lunatic, dad!”

Good stuff. A Nightmare on Elm Street still works well, primarily because it has the vision to exercise restraint. There’s only one particularly bloody death, and it’s staged in such a shocking and unexpected way that it may be the most effective scene in the whole film. And while Englund famously makes the most of his appearances as Freddy, he’s actually on screen very seldom. This allows the film’s atmosphere to do its work, and forces your mind to go much darker than the story probably intends. As someone who grew up on this stuff, I still had a lot of good, creepy fun revisiting this world so many years later.

He may no longer be the cutting edge of horror, but Wes Craven’s most famous creation became the (partially melted) face of the genre and redefined how scary movies were made for over a generation. While subsequent installments in the series were of varied quality, and a poorly received 2010 remake fizzled, this is a universe I wouldn’t mind seeing explored more seriously in the future.


Continued:       1       2       3

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.