Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of the 1984 horror film, starring the iconic character Freddy Kruger. The film follows five teenagers as they are killed in their dreams, in retribution for an event that was carried out by their parents. These teens must figure out what is going on, survive as long as they can, and, finally, defeat the murderer in order to survive the whole incident. Now you can get your copy of Nightmare on Elm Street on Blu-ray!History of the franchise:
The year is 1984, and a fledgling studio has just released the film that will make enough money to make it viable as a major film studio, following a devastating financial slump. The studio is New Line Cinema, and the film is the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. The movie was created by director Wes Craven, after he read several articles in the Los Angeles times about several people who had died in their sleep after having nightmares involving a “Mr. K”. “Mr. K” became the villain of the movie Freddy Kruger. Originally, Freddy Kruger was written as a child molester, but was changed to a child killer after a series of highly publicized child molestation cases in the early 1980’s. The movie was made for $1.8 million ($3.83 mil. after inflation), and grossed $25.5 million domestically in 1984 ($52.5 mil. after inflation). This lead to a lucrative horror franchise consisting of six more films each being released in 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1994. For the third installment, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Wes Craven returned to co-write the script. In 1994, Wes Craven wrote and directed the final film of the franchise, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. New Nightmare took a metaphysical approach to the film, making it about making a sequel in the franchise where an evil entity is trapped in the world of the first six films. In 2003, after having acquired the rights to the other major horror franchise (Friday the 13th) a decade earlier, New Line Cinema made a cross-over film to both franchises, Freddy vs. Jason, where the titular characters battle to an ambiguous end. In 2010, New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes rebooted the franchise, casting Jackie Earle Haley as Freddie Kruger, replacing Robert Englund, who had played Freddy Kruger in every movie since the first. The movie was well received, garnering a total box office gross of $115,657,648 worldwide.
The re-imagining changes the way that the story plays out in two ways. First, the creative team creates the idea of micronaps, where the brain forces a few seconds of sleep, to reboot the brain, allowing the line of sleep and wake to blur, making Freddy a more threatening villain. Second, they took Freddie back to Wes Craven’s original inception of Freddy, as a child molester (rather than a child killer), removed the cheesy one-liners, and made him a darker character. These changes added a deeper and more urgent sense of danger.
Special Features:
-Deleted Scenes: The disc has three deleted scenes. It has an alternate opening, an alternate ending, and one extended scene.
-Freddy Kruger Reborn: This one is a featurette about the reimagining of Nightmare on Elm Street.
-Maniacal Movie Mode: This is basically a renamed Maximum Movie mode, an interactive viewing experience with short features about different pieces of the production.
-1080p Video
-5.1 DTS-HD audio
-Digital Copy
Overall:
Nightmare on Elm Street is rather surprising for a reimagining/reboot of a popular film franchise, in that it works, and is actually quite good. Freddy Kruger is a bit more dangerous in this version of the film. With the new micronaps, and the change to a child molester, there is a more inherent fear that takes over as each plot point is added. Most significantly, when Freddy first becomes sexual toward Nancy, the entire tone of the film changes from a fear of being brutally murdered, to a fear of so much more horror.
ComicsOnline gives Nightmare on Elm Street 4 murdered teenagers out of 5.
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