Nightmare On Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 2010 American slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer, and written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer. The film stars Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker and Kellan Lutz. This film is a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 film of the same name and is the ninth Nightmare film in total. Produced by Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes, it is designed to reboot the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This film had two distributors, Warner Bros and New Line Cinema.

At the begging of the film Kris Fowles goes to the Springwood Diner to meet with her boyfriend, Dean Russell who falls asleep at the table and in his nightmare meets a man covered in burn scars, wearing a red and green sweater, a fedora and a clawed glove on his hand. The burned man cuts Dean's throat in the dream, but in reality it appears that Dean is cutting his own throat. At deans funeral Kris discovers a photo when the two were younger but cannot remember ever meeting him before. She had then told her friend Nancy (final girl of the movie) of this discovery she then discovers that there was a preschool that all the teenagers that are being affected by these dreams attended and were all in the same year group. Nancy’s mother then reveals to Nancy that this man in their dreams “Freddy Kruger”  use to be the caretaker at their preschool and use to love the children a little too much. He use to take each child one by one down to his basement which the school use to let him live in. He would touch the children in an inappropriate way and would cut them with gardening utensil such as a trowel.  The parents found out about this behaviour and wanted there revenge so they burnt him alive one evening. Many years had passed and all the children are now teenagers when Freddy decided to get his own revenge to kill his ex-students.  He is a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills the students in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality. Nancy decides to stand up to Freddy and kills him in his dream world. Thinking that it’s a happy ending Nancy no longer has these dreams but in the last scene of the movie Freddy turns his anger to the parents and now starts to kill them in their sleep.

This movie challenges Todorov’s theory as the beginning scene is someone getting murdered in their dream.  The film never really has an equilibrium as it’s a sequence of different murder’s all committed by the serial killer Freddy Kruger. The only time that it slightly follows Todorov’s theory is when the movie has a flash back to their childhood and everything is fine until it reveals that Freddy molesters the children.

When it comes to audience expectation for Slasher movies it is almost entirely made up of adolescents. There has been much speculation on why many teenagers are drawn to the genre. Critics of the genre argue that it is the frequent violence, nudity and sex that attract a teenage audience. Other theorists argue that it’s a deeper logic, into adolescent psychology. Because violent films are frowned upon by cinema critics and authority figures, the teenagers desire to rebel and view these movies is what drives the audience to watch violent films. As nightmare on elm street 2010 version is a remake of the original film Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984. This is a very famous film with a very iconic villain, Freddy Kruger. Because this film was such a success a lot of the general public have seen the movie so will know what to expect from the remake.  There is a cliff hanger at the end of this movie ready for a sequel, which were made after the 1984 film.  

To create a good horror film, there needs to be good setting, light, music and characters to get the full potential of scaring the audience. In this film the setting is a suburban town with perfect houses and people; the perfect American life style. By making this setting into a horror film is a good idea because the audience don’t expect what’s to come and it defeats the conventions of a suburban lifestyle. In this film as the murders are committed in their dreams it is always generally night time. Natural night lit sky is common for horror films as this is when people feel most vulnerable. The music is usually what makes the movie very tense as it’s usually eerie and is a very subtle indicator that something is going to happen.  Because this movie has been out for a while the general public have learnt Freddy Kruger as a house hold name as he is such a big character in the horror genre, making this film very popular.

As this movie is a slasher film, it fits in the 1980s category of horror history. As the original film was brought out in the 1980s it’s no surprise that it followed this trend of slasher as this kind of genre was the best rating at the time as it was most popular.

Freddy Kruger is the main character in this film as he is the villain and the whole story line is based around him and why he became a serial killer. I think that Kruger was so famous because of his iconic glove that he always wore, attached to the glove were 4 long sharp blades. You could tell who had been killed by him as this was the only weapon he would use and would leave the blade marks on the body. Another way to recognise Freddy is because of his red and green stripped jumper that was a part of his iconography.  The main hero in this film was a girl called Nancy who was on Freddy’s to kill list as she attended this preschool. She was the final girl of this movie as she figured out how to kill him and that it was something to with sleep. She also figured out that it was something to do with their past and tried to worn her fellow peers.

In conclusion I would say that this is a very successful movie because of the interesting story line and how it is almost like a murder mystery, apart from all the brutal murders which make it a slasher horror movie. Freddy Kruger is a true iconic character for horror, renowned for interesting way of killing and also the props as part of his iconography. It follows all the techniques of a horror, slow paced at the begging, getting to know the characters and narrative with a huge climax at the end along with a final girl character.