By Charlie Wachtel
Mark your calendars because Freddy Krueger is back. In 2010, a new version of the Wes Craven-inspired A Nightmare on Elm Street is scheduled to hit theaters. Teaming up to offer the re-imagined slasher are horror-rehash vet Brad Fuller (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th) and music-video guru Samuel Bayer.
So what can we expect from Nightmare, and more importantly from Freddy Krueger? Earlier this week at Comic-Con, Fuller and Bayer revealed their goals for the film as well as their insights regarding the intentions of Wes Craven from the original film.
“I think he was supposed to be a scarier character,” said Bayer who felt that the sequels evolved with an increasing sense of humor. While maintaining that he wants to keep Freddy mysterious until the film hits theaters, Bayer admits “my Freddy doesn’t tell a lot of jokes.” The new Freddy will apparently appear a lot more life-like as the make-up artists have labored hard to deliver a Freddy who resembles more closely actual burned-victims. There was concern that the make-up would be too “grotesque,” so the make-up team worked out a compromise in order for movie-goers to not want to turn away from the screen during each scene.
Producer Brad Fuller also touched on tackling of the notorious dream sequences. Fuller commented that the transitions between the real world and dream world are virtually seamless so that the viewer can hardly tell the difference between each of the sequences.
Playing Freddy Krueger himself will unfortunately not be the great Robert Englund. Instead, the versatile and explosive Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen, Little Children) assumes the role and is said to have created a new voice for Freddy a couple weeks into production. Haley who most recently played Rorschach in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen addressed the fact that he is transitioning from playing a tortured soul into someone who actually tortures. He wouldn’t elaborate too much on the movie itself without giving away too much information, but expressed his excitement for “the pharmacy sequence.”
So what can we expect from the new A Nightmare on Elm Street? Hopefully a good, old-fashioned horror film. And also the reassurance that as long as Jackie Earle Haley is playing Freddy Krueger, the film will likely be terrifying.
Charlie Wachtel is a Senior Writer for The Film Crusade and Founder of www.filmcrusade.com.
