Like so many readers, I’m sure, who come to this site, Freddy Krueger is, for me, an icon. As Superman has become an icon of heroism and Americana, recognized world over, Freddy is the epitome of villainy, both in terms of real terror, and in the Snidely Whiplash kind of way. Regardless of what he may have become in later years, later films, throughout my childhood Freddy was truly the thing nightmares were made of.

And so it was that I, who once had very real and very horrific nightmares of Freddy, inspired by numerous viewings of those decades old classics, ventured into the midnight screening of the new Nightmare on Elm Street with a mix of fear, suppressed expectations, and just a hint of optimism. And, I gotta say, I came out pretty happy about the whole thing.

So, you should know the tale by now. Fred Krueger, accused child molester, never brought before a trial. Instead, the town’s folk gather to torch the guy vigilante style. 12 years later, Freddy returns as a nocturnal creature of limitless power, seeking revenge on the parents that burned him by massacring their children. None of this has changed. In fact, this movie is, to an extent, a retelling of the original Nightmare, complete with Nancy and a bathtub scene, and a number of other borrowed ideas.

And really, it’s kind of sad that the production guys felt the need to remake so many elements of the film, because those are really the worst parts of it. The failings of the new Nightmare always rear their head when the movie attempts to outdo the original. In the process, it always trips over itself. Take, for example, the bedroom scene, where Nancy’s wall pulses out over her as she sleeps, revealing the form of Freddy, poised to strike, watching her in her slumber. In the original film, this visual was created with a simple practical effect, a stuntman pressing out through a fake spandex wall, with some tricky lighting. The final product chilled the audience, leading them to talk about how awesome it was until, well, now. The new Nightmare has the same sequence, but now with a CG Freddy coming from the wall, and screaming at Nancy like a creature from The Mummy. The audience chuckled at how bad it looked.

This, the bathtub sequence that goes nowhere, the death of Christina on the ceiling (now Chris and not Tina, inexplicably): none of these scenes work as well as the original versions. It just treads over the same material in less spectacular, though more expensive, fashion. And while we’re on the subject of treading over old material, its worth mentioning the pain of having to watch another series of characters figure out who Freddy is, how he can affect them in their dreams, and why their parents are covering it up. I suppose I would have preferred a relaunch of the old series to a reboot in this regard, the first 20 minutes or so, watching teens (I use the term loosely, Chris is probably the same age as the actress playing her mom) stumble through a series of dream revelations via a stream of awkward dialog, is pretty hard to put up with. I found myself wishing that film-makers would just give the audience the benefit of a doubt, and assume we know something about Freddy before the movie starts. Save everyone some time, that way.

But once all that crap is out of the way, once the required old-series reverence/pissing-contest is over with, the new Nightmare evolves into its own creature, and it’s this back part that surprised me and kept me interested to the end.

First, we gotta cover Freddy. Jackie Earle Haley is a terrific actor, and he really pulls this off. But this isn’t your parents’ Freddy… Hell, it isn’t even my Freddy… this is a new creature, perhaps a bit more like he was envisioned during the original Nightmare, and a long way from what he became over the course of many sequels. There are still a couple of quips, but the delivery is much more serious. Here, Freddy really lacks his comedic tone, and tends to have more genuine menace about his character. And why not? In this version, the concept of Freddy as a child molester is tackled head-on, and he really is a sick, dirty bastard this outing.

With this new vision of Freddy on the loose, the story gets a bit of a tweak as well. Previously, Freddy had been referred to as ‘a dirty child killer’, the nature of what he did with the kids in his boiler room always left obfuscated, left to the imagination. The parents of the sleepy suburb had just killed Krueger before he could sink his claws into their children, none of whom had any connection or prior knowledge of Freddy. In the new film, there’s no avoiding it, Freddy was a goddamn pervert, taking kids back to his secret room to touch them, to scratch them, and maybe to get a few photos of ‘em. Nude. There’s really very little way to get any humor out of child molestation, and so Freddy is played totally straight here. He’s about the most evil shit you can imagine, and when you discover his ultimate goal… well, it’s honestly a little more sinister than old Freddy’s ‘kill ‘em all’ philosophy. It adds a little more weight to the line “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.”

This time out, all of the kids Freddy victimizes are related, and Freddy to them through some hazy, slowly explored pre-school mystery plot. It lends a little more credence to Freddy’s activities, his powers, his connection to his victims. Of course, it also makes the parents of this installment look a lot stupider than was probably intended. You’ve got 13 dead kids from one class, all of whom claim to have been attacked by this guy they used to know on a first name basis. This isn’t suspicious? In the original Nightmare, all of the murders are pinned on town delinquent Ron Lane – that doesn’t really happen here, and so it really leads you to wonder, just what the fuck do the adults in this town think is going on.

It’s failures in logic like this one that weaken the story, and again, it’s all caused by reverence to the original script, the need to put the same 4 main characters into similar roles, even if two of them don’t contribute anything to the story at hand. When left to its own devices, allowed to make original dream sequences, original jumps and scares, to explore the idea of Freddy as a character, it’s all pretty fantastic.

That said, I’m still more a fan of the original Nightmare. (Knowing that there was no way in Hell this thing wasn’t going to be compared to the original, I took the liberty of watching the original 3 times this week. 3. Fucking. Times. It’s in my blood.) In many ways, its story telling was tighter, more focused, and somehow its imagery left a deeper, more horrific scar on my psyche. But I can’t say that the original wasn’t in need of some sort of update. Everything in the movie worked so well for 1984, but I really don’t know if teens now can watch the film and connect with pink sweater-vest, khaki-pleated pants wearing Nancy and her squad of geeky friends. I don’t think that people who watch the movie now, without the gift of nostalgia or unbiased hindsight can do anything but bust into giggling fits when the end comes, and Freddy is forced to run through a series of booby traps straight out of Home Alone. He gets hit with a hammer, and bounces around like a damn Looney Toon. I think people in my own age bracket will always love the original story, but viewers coming into the movie fresh will end up preferring it for the darker tone, and the ultimately very creative use of dream imagery and sleep-deprived-micro-naps to blur the atmosphere, and the lines of reality.

But I also don’t think that this Nightmare series will ever manage to reach the heights of the original, and the serious tone is exactly the reason for that. Freddy, like I said, is an icon. When I was a kid, I was scared shitless of him. But, at the same time, I watched the movies, I watched his TV Series, I read his comics, I wanted to be him for Halloween, I had the Freddy Board Game; they even made talking dolls of the guy. Talking. Dolls. This might be the first time in history that a child molester was made into a toy mass marketed towards kids. ‘Hey, take Freddy to bed with you!’ But I think that was more excusable, because after the first movie, until part 6 where Robert Englund finally got to appear sans make-up, Freddy’s past criminal exploits are largely unexplored. Instead, those middle chapters show Freddy largely as a walking quip machine, cracking wise and dropping puns as the gleefully hacks down teens, most of whom are drugged up or oversexed. In many ways, Freddy, like so many other slasher-types, inadvertently becomes a sort of ‘morality police’, killing anyone who isn’t ‘pure’ enough to stop his advance. He’s less of a crazed villain, and more of a vigilante, taking out people that would generally annoy the piss out of us in a real-life setting.

In the new Nightmare, this icon status will be impossible to reach, unless toy companies, TV stations, and what have you, are comfortable using the image of a very open, very graphic child molester as one of their mascots. While old Freddy had a bit of wiggle room as to his shady past, and a knockout pun delivery, the new Freddy most definitely put his tongue in a little girl’s ear, and seems to fully endorse raping people ’til they die from it. While I know an action figure of Freddy does exist, I just can’t see more than a few companies having the balls to try to make this version into a spokesman.

All this aside, the new Nightmare on Elm Street makes for an interesting new addition to the series, and when left to develop its own merits, becomes a more threatening and ultimately very important addition to the franchise. It may have a painfully awkward opening, it may not be as strong at characterization as the old film, but it avoids many of the pitfalls of Freddy’s other outings, and tries to stay focused on provocative dream imagery and terror at all times. Solidly 3^rd in order of favorite Nightmare films, this version gave me just enough positive to hope that it merits a sequel, so that future creative minds can once again help Freddy’s legacy to grow and thrive, to find new ways to make sure that Mr. Krueger remains the stuff nightmares are made of.