When a darker ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street‘ was due out in 2010 many fans were excited that the camp from the previous films was being removed for a darker and edgier take on Freddy Krueger, until we saw what actually ended up on the big screen. Now, Thomas Dekker (‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’,’Elvira’s Movie Macabre’) who played Jesse Braun in the character is opening up as to why the concept ended up being executed so poorly and I’m sure anyone can easily guess that it was from studio interference. With a take on Freddy that would have made him the true nightmare that he could always have been based on a serial killer who went after children, this should have been a pretty easy win for horror fanatics and yet flopped horribly.
So what went wrong? We know why Robert Englund wasn’t a fan but according to Dekker:
“It’s a tricky one to talk about. I would say it was an honor to be a part of it. I think the cast, as we know, we had two, now one-time Oscar nominee and another two-time Oscar nominee who’s still a very good friend of mine, Rooney Mara, and I think the issue at hand with that movie can’t really be thrown at the director because the director was basically a gun for hire to make it look good. And he did that. It looked great. But it’s basically like most good films tell a story, that film was to sell a tuxedo. It’s a sales movie. ‘It’s okay, we got this idea we’re going to take and we’re going to make money off it, so let’s just do that.’ Even though the intentions of the artistic forces behind it were, ‘Okay, we’re going to open up the mythology of Freddy Krueger, we’re going to make him darker and actually explore the idea of child sexual abuse’ and those are all the things that interested me. Of course at the end of the day when you have to put it in 1,000 theaters or more, you have to shy away from those things and just make it a sell-able entity. So I think, you can’t really start judging the leaves of a tree if the seed is fucked.”
So the studio and writers and director all seemed to have an idea of where to take the film and with the studio wanting a mass release they couldn’t all have what they wanted. It gave us a fractured vision of the darker Freddy which should have truly been able to give nightmares which were held back by Platinum Dunes shying from the actual horror that made Freddy who he is.
When the next reboot comes along, and there will be one, maybe the studio will be willing to truly embrace the darkness for the grittier Freddy that they want to deliver.
Do you agree that only being half committed is what made ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ a flop or do you feel it was something else which ruined the movie? Share your thoughts below!
Source: Screen Geek
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
