I’ll be honest with you: I don’t quite understand the popularity of this film. Maybe it isn’t this film in and of itself, but rather the franchise. But A Nightmare on Elm Street holds a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, this seems to be mostly from horror reviewers, but the point still stands: this film is popular.
Maybe it’s the villain. Freddy Krueger, only really referred to as Fred Krueger in this film. Freddy is a pretty good villain. He is scary looking and pretty eerie. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does it’s either funny or creepy. The fact that he seems to toy with his some of his victims before killing them suits the character and the mere fact that he is a child murderer would be disturbing to some.
At first I was quite upset that Freddy didn’t actually seem to get much time on screen but that really works for his creepiness factor. The less you see him, the more you fear him. Sadly, when it comes to the climax he seems pretty useless and is comically taken down at one point by a sledgehammer (come on, he’s some supernatural being!), which takes away from his legitimacy as a fearsome villain.
The acting in this film is also another positive for this film. All of the actors are pretty good, especially the leading cast, such as Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, and Johnny Depp. Langenkamp is the heroin of the film and she carries off her role perfectly, unlike the girl who gets killed first, played by Amanda Wyss.
So we have two positives, but why does this film confuse me?
Well, it’s the execution of the plot. You see, Freddy is dead, killed by the parents on Elm Street because he was a child murderer and got off of prison on a technicality. So now he is getting back at the parents by killing their children in their dreams, where he has power. It's a very interesting a good basic plot to the film.
But I find that it all falls apart when we see Freddy affecting things outside of the dreams. One of the characters is killed off by being hanged by his bed sheets in a police station cell. How does he do this? Does he have control over anything to do with the bed? Depp’s character is clearly awake when he is killed, blood gushing up to the ceiling from a hole in his bed in a ridiculous manner. At the end of the film he gets out of the dream and tries to kill the main character.
By the end of the film we have all of the characters alive again, together in a convertible. Then the cover comes up and it’s in the design of Freddy’s shirt, the doors all lock, the windows all go up and the car drives away. The Nancy’s mum is then waving them off and suddenly Freddy’s clawed hand busts through the door and drags the mum in. The End!
What? What happened there?! Was this all a dream? I get the feeling that this is like some sort of Inception dream within a dream within a dream/which reality is reality and which is the dream stuff going on. I have no idea what happened at the end there, nor what happened before it. The movie has made no effort to explain these things and instead just leaves me sitting here feeling confused.
This is why the popularity of this film confuses me. Conceptually it's really good but it just fails in execution. Freddy’s powers are confusing and the events of the film are questionable. It’s such a shame because A Nightmare on Elm Street does a great job at building up tension and suspense, but this is all sadly taken over by confusion as the film goes on.
And when the better version of this film is the parody from The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror VI then there may be some issues with the source material.
And when the better version of this film is the parody from The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror VI then there may be some issues with the source material.
But maybe when I think A Nightmare on Elm Street is popular I’m thinking of the franchise, and not the initial film in the series. I’m sure I’ll find out as this series continues.
Final Verdict: 4/10
Depp's character wasn't awake when he was killed. Well, he was 'awake' in the dream.
ReplyDeleteIn reality Freddy is just another person, that's his weakness, in the dream world he's basically a God as he can shift and alter anything at will. In the real world he has no power, he only has his claws. Apart from that he can be hurt.
As for affecting stuff in reality, it's more of a plot device to make it look like suicide. Believe me it gets stupid in the fourth one when people think a character committed suicide by ramming their head through a tv that's above them without anything to stand on to reach it.
I just find it wasn't shown off very well in the film and the ending didn't help at all. I expect that maybe a sequel might explain things better, but as it stands all we have is "Freddy kills you in your dreams" and no mention of going outside them, which I found to be silly.
ReplyDeleteBut we'll see.
Well it's said that you can pull stuff out of your dream, as shown when Nancy pulled Freddy's hat out (I bet he was pissed about that).
ReplyDeleteBut as said when affecting stuff outside the dream when he's in the dream world, yeah, plot convenience. It's still on of my favourite horror films though.
The second one though......probably my least favourite out of the franchise. Or maybe Freddy's Dead is my least favourite? One of the two.
Been thinking about this. See, I can see him coming out of the dream because of taking things out of the dream and everything, but it just didn't seem to be established very well, almost purely because of the ending.
ReplyDeleteIf it wasn't because of the ending and the bed sheets I'd be far more OK with what had happened. But the ending just kind of made the entire film feel useless. It made it seem like the entire film was a dream and the only reason he came out of the dream was because it was a dream in a dream. It just got a bit too confusing with its own rules.
Honestly think the better version of this film was the Simpson's version xD