Now, before you start commenting that they obviously are naming the remake of this movie on the most hated list and not the original, let me stop you -- I know. The original is considered a classic and obviously the first one wasn't. What I find amusing though is that this film, Texas and Halloween all made the most hated list, but they still omitted other horror classics that got remade. Friday the 13th? Black Christmas? The Hitcher? They made a completely useless prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, why not get mad at that? I guess we know now where the hierarchy of horror films stands with the person who originally made this list.
So, let's get down to it -- does this film deserve to be on the most hated list? Well, as a movie in the series, it isn't really one of the better entries, Freddy for one thing is too short and basically, it's going back to Freddy's origin which quite frankly, has already been covered by the rest of the series, so it's pointless. Also, calling A Nightmare on Elm Street obviously draws comparisons to the original and next to that film, this one is extremely deficient. So, all in all, I don't think there's much point to this movie and I can understand if you're a Nightmare enthusiast, not being too enthralled with this film.
I think though that is an extremely small subset of the population. The fact is, people have been bagging on the Nightmare series for years, with every film, the reviews just got worse and worse. Personally, I think the first five in the series are ridiculously solid and above a lot of the garbage people heap on them. Sure, a menacing Freddy is better than a silly, wise-cracking Freddy, but there's enough imagination and creativity in those films, enough thrills and neat stuff happening to forgive their shortcomings. Six was a hot mess and Seven is just in a league of its own, I can't even begin to tell you how special Seven is, just for what it goes for and the spin it puts on everything, New Nightmare is a crazy movie that will never be duplicated.
So, what's my point? My point is, people have decided they haven't liked the Nightmare series for years, so for them to hate this new addition, you have to convince me that you loved the original series, not just the original movie, but the whole damned thing because if you hate this movie, it's because it perverted everything that made the original movies so good (I'm not accepting "I love the first film but don't care about the rest, either...that's a copout if I ever heard one). So, is this film a disgrace to the Nightmare series? Frankly, it's not as bad as that -- somewhat pointless, no doubt and it has it's problems in terms of story, plotting and all the logic stuff. It does have decent atmosphere though and Freddy is still the showcase of the film so...like I said, unless you have posters plastered all over your residence with Freddy's mug on it, then quite frankly, I don't get the hate.
Rating: Worth the hate? For non-Nightmare on Elm Street Series fans, I would say no.
- Stephenstein
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