A Nightmare to Sit Through

I went to see the new remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street for Jackie Earle Haley. No, not because I owed him a favor or anything, but because I thought his casting as Freddy Krueger, stepping into Robert Englund's iconic finger-blades, was dead-on. I loved Haley as Rorschach in Watchmen -- he was the best thing in the movie -- and I've enjoyed him as the computer geek sidekick in the Fox drama Human Target. So I figured, what's not to like?

How about the fact that he barely registers under all that melted-cheese-pizza makeup and pitched-way-down-to-here gravel pit of a voice? How about that none of the "high schoolers" (and I use that term very loosely) look like they've seen the business end of a hall pass in about ten years? How about that the movie is so crammed with music stings and jump cuts -- the cheapest, laziest way to get a scream out of the horror film audience -- that you're bored inside of about 30 minutes?

This movie was designed to cash in on the horror remake craze quickly and get out of Dodge, which it seems to have done, taking the box office for one weekend before the Iron Man 2 juggernaut rolls into town. It's probably going to make back its investment, and a nice, tidy profit besides, which means we'll likely see Haley pull on the finger blades one more time. Well, somebody will. But not me, brother. This nightmare is over.

Give the new Nightmare 3 out of 10 stars. An early candidate for the Allie of 2010.