Review in a Hurry: It's been seven years since the original fedora'd and finger-knived Freddy Krueger, played by Robert Englund, got decapitated by Jason Voorhees. But you can't keep a dapper dream-demon down. So here he is in a new incarnation, with Jackie Earle Haley making the character ickier and pervier than before; the story's a bit slavishly faithful, but overall, it's a worthy Freddy follow-up.
The Bigger Picture: It's unlikely that anyone old enough to be interested in this movie doesn't already know the story almost beat by beat. Teens are dying in their sleep after a series of bad dreams, and those not yet dead realize they share visions of Freddy, a burned, bladed ghost whose motives are rooted in a real-world incident they must uncover.
Director Samuel Bayer (Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video) is torn between doing something different and satiating purists—to that end, many familiar scenes (the glove in the bathtub, the body bag in the hall) are dutifully recreated; plot-wise, this is way closer to the source than Platinum Dunes' recent revamps of Jason and Leatherface. But it's the moments when Bayer goes off-book that are most effective, using modern special effects to augment the dreams in ways that weren't possibly back in the day, on a budget.
The Nightmare on Elm Street series always was the most interesting of the slasher franchises. Instead of offering a limited environment and a silent slayer, the dream settings allowed near-unlimited creativity, and Freddy was both dangerously smart and an irrepressible smartass.
Though the character was watered down by such tie-ins as a rap video with the Fat Boys, and a guest-hosting stint on MTV, it's a bit of a common misperception that he became overly watered-down onscreen. Yes, he made dark one-liners, but he was always a threat, and his victims were generally sympathetic.
So when the folks in charge of this remake tell you they're reclaiming Freddy as a more "serious" character, they're fibbing a bit: Not just because Freddy was never as emasculated in the movies as they seem to think, but also because this new Freddy still has the wisecracks, including a couple directly lifted from the original and its sequels.
The difference here is that Freddy is now possibly a molester as well as a murderer (if indeed he was guilty of anything at all in life, which is another new potential wrinkle). This makes the whole thing more unsettling and disturbing, yes; but also makes it less easy to enjoy in quite the same escapist way as before.
With that said, here is an update with some thought behind it, a horror movie actually about something. By tying Freddy's past more directly in with that of heroine Nancy (Rooney Mara), Bayer has turned him into a metaphor for the way repressed traumas can cause harm years later. And Haley, who has recently earned acclaim for playing both a child molester and a comic-book vigilante, draws on traits from both for an unnerving performance that shouldn't disappoint fans.
It will, however, make you feel doubly queasy about seeing Freddy gloves on a Toys "R" Us shelf.
The 180—a Second Opinion: An early dream sequence features both an excess of obvious red and green lights (to match the sweater) and conspicuous severed pig heads that bring up unnecessary associations with the Saw series.