If at first you do succeed, reboot and reboot again. Especially if the last reboot sucked.
Fans of the long-running, beloved and creepily inventive horror movie franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street are left with mixed feelings this evening after word came down from The Tracking Board that a second reboot is en route from New Line Cinema, five years after the previous attempt to remake, reimagine and/or whatever-the-heck-else-you-call-telling-the-same-story-all-over-again-to-make-it-sound-like-a-good-idea bombed with audiences.
Wes Craven’s original 1984 horror classic starred Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, a child-murderer who comes back from the dead to murder his victims in their dreams. The first A Nightmare on Elm Street spawned six sequels, one crossover with the Friday the 13th series, one video game and two forgotten TV spin-offs (including a reality game show).
The 2010 remake starred Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy Krueger and spawned both universal disappointment and serious questions about whether the whole Hollywood remake machine had gone too far.
Hollywood of course responded with “Not nearly far enough!” and proceeded to wait only five years to try rebooting the Nightmare series again.
No director is currently attached to the latest version, but screenwriter David Leslie Johnson is hard at work with what The Tracking Board calls “a fresh new take” that will ignore the previous installment. Johnson’s horror credentials include the gloriously irresponsible 2009 creepy kid movie Orphan, two episodes of The Walking Dead and the YA reimagining of Red Riding Hood, which he would probably prefer we all forget about.
If we have learned anything from the contemporary glut of remakes, reboots, etc. it’s that just because a movie sounds like a bad idea, doesn’t mean it is actually destined to stink. Wes Craven himself tried out a strange new take on the Nightmare on Elm Street story with 1994’s New Nightmare, which pit Krueger against the actors and filmmakers who brought him to life in the “real” world, and that film turned out to be one of the horror highlights of the 1990s, simultaneously mocking all the “funny” sequels and returning the villain to his original, shocking roots.
But of course if one were to ask “does the world really NEED another Nightmare on Elm Street remake?” the answer would be, “No, of course not… unless you already own the rights and want more money.”
Images via New Line Cinema
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
