Fans have certainly noticed that it’s been a dozen years since we’ve seen A Nightmare on Elm Street on our screens, which is utterly bizarre when virtually every notable horror IP under the sun (or fiery depths of hell) has been rebooted, remade, or reinvented at least once in that time.
The estate of Wes Craven has been inviting pitches for several years since the rights reverted back to the late creator, and yet nothing has managed to prove worthy enough to see Freddy Krueger crawl his way out of development hell once more. Samuel Bayer’s 2010 retread is the highest-grossing entry in the franchise’s history bar Freddy vs. Jason, but it didn’t exactly go down well with either critics or longtime Elm Street supporters.
However, that might not be entirely true in spite of its horrendous 14 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, with a recent Reddit thread finding a surprising volume of slasher stans voicing their support for a widely-panned but moderately successful attempt to drag the flagging property back into the cultural spotlight.
The consensus seems to be that Jackie Earle Haley made for a fine Freddy, but the entire film was hampered by two things above all. Firstly, he wasn’t Robert Englund, and a lot of people were never going to get over it. Secondly, his performance was so serious, straight-faced and chilling that it felt at odds with the campy, over-the-top evolution the character had undergone since his debut in 1984.
Is it better than you remember? Entirely debatable, but maybe it’s worth revisiting as the wait for a new Nightmare goes on.