A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Having recently viewed and been disappointed by the original Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), I went into the remake thinking Wes Craven’s brain-child was an excellent candidate for a cinematic reawakening. The effects would be updated, the actors could be upgraded and the story – which suffered several missteps in the execution of a truly great concept about a psycho who kills you in your sleep – could be smoothed out and perfected in the second going. The folks at Michael Bay’s remake factory, Platinum Dunes, made several strides in each of those keys directions when producing the new Nightmare. But their end product takes a massive step back in the wrong direction.

Retro Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

You know what A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is? It’s an idea – a really cool, really interesting and extremely frightening idea. Over the past 25 years Nightmare has maintained elite slasher flick status, propelling writer/director Wes Craven into the Horror Hall of Fame and installing Freddy Kruger as a cinematic household name. Aficionados who came up in the 80s look at it as one of the greats. It maintains an astounding (and alarming) 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, beating out other slasher classic like the original Halloween (93%), Scream (81%), and the original Friday the 13th (60%). In fact, if you don’t count Psycho (which, to be fair, isn’t structured like a slasher flick), Nightmare is the most acclaimed slasher flick of all time. And not just on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic, the New York Times, etc. all view Nightmare as a pinnacle of its genre. A truly classic horror film.

And it may in fact be just that. You may have watched this flick as a kid and been haunted in your sleep for weeks. But guess what – I watched it the other night, and I thought it sucked.

Retro Review: Red Eye (2005)

When Red Eye terrorized screens in the summer of 2005, it was both a return to form and a change of pace for director Wes Craven, a horror heavyweight younger audiences have never heard of (talk about scary, right?). Twenty years removed from his Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) heyday, and another decade from his previous Scream (1995)-fueled career revival, Red Eye was a straightforward thriller with very little blood and a scrawny, blue-eyed villain. Hell it was even engineered like a love story – boy meets girl, boy-woos-girl, boy…terrorizes girl?


There’s probably a gender-in-film essay in there somewhere, but let’s just cut to the knife-weilding chase – Red Eye is a clever concept that both embraces and rebels against horror movie clichés, and it’s clear just how much fun that was for Craven. That love-story twist, nailed perfectly in the film’s excellent trailer, is only the first deviation from the norm in Carl Ellsworth’s tight and self-aware script. Horrors and thrillers live for that 3rd act wow moment. Ellsworth puts it front and center, then leaves his cards face up the rest of the way. Red Eye, unlike its contemporaries, doesn't offer much mystery at all. But it is powered by the most basic horror element – survival...