Saw it. And I must say....I was very very dissapointed
The first Nightmare is one of my favorite movies of all time. The trailers for this new remake looked amazing. I even entertained the possibility that it could be better than the first. But the actuall film was far under my expectations.
It started out good, and there were a few scenes that were done well, such as the new version of "Tina"'s death, and some parts of the final dream sequence, and the final shot of the movie was great. But as for the rest of it...the pace seemed very slow to me at times, the characters were barely fleshed out at all, and the way the back story unfolded was odd (such as the flash back dream).
But my biggest problem is with the dream sequences and with the casting of Freddy. I know some people would say I'm just a biased fan with Nostalgia filters on fully blast, but seriously, after 8 movies there's no one else who could be Freddy half as good as Robert Englund. Jackie Earle Haley definitly tried, but I just don't think he's got the same stuff as Robert. I also really didn;t like the make-up, they should have shadowed his face more, cause when he's in the light he looks a little like an Alien, or Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies. And the dream sequences...ugh. Dreams for the ADD suffering generation. The dreams in the first movie took their time, building the atmosphere, drawing things out, and when Freddy showed up he actually DID stuff, like chasing the kids. This is why the last sequence managed to actually be half way descent, because it had a real chase. Almost all the rest of the dreams consisted of the characters either A) finding themselves in a room with Freddy, who'd say threatening things before they either wake-up or he just kills them, or B) the characters walking somewhere when suddenly Freddy jumps in out of frame. "jump scares" are so overused in this movie ><. There are a few little sprinklings of modern special effects and stuff in the dreams, but for the most part they're just very short, and bland, and uncreative. And thats another thing, the dreams just seem to be lacking the creative spark that previous movies had. The dreams didn;t start getting totally weird and off the wall till part 3, but even in the original there was some variety to things, and at least one "creative" kill that wasn't just "Freddy stabs someone".
Overall, very very dissapointing. I went in expecting it to be great, because I seriously didn;t expect that you could possibly mess up Elm Street, but I was let down. In terms of remakes, it wasn;t as good as Zombie's Halloween remake. From technical standpoint its probably better than the Friday or Texas Chainsaw remakes, but I still find myself grading it harsher because I expected so much *more* from an Elm Street movie than a Friday or Chainsaw movie.