‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ – You’ll sleep like a baby

Nightmares might be the laziest trope in the horror movie handbook.

Need a cheap fright? Whip up a dream sequence … voila, audiences are cringing in their seats, even if deep down they know it’s just a cheap stunt.

Then along came Freddy … Krueger, that is.

The “Nightmare on Elm Street” monster gave purpose to those cinematic dreams, his razor wit – and glove – slicing innocents with a combination of rage and glee.

We couldn’t get enough, so Hollywood kept feeding us inferior sequels.

But the new franchise reboot, “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” adds nothing fresh to the formula besides a casting switch that doesn’t payoff as expected.

A group of teens living on bucolic Elm Street all share the same recurring nightmare, that of a scarred man threatening them with a knife-tipped glove.

And some never wake up from these dreams.

It’s Freddy Krueger’s handiwork, of course, now played by Jackie Earle Haley. But why is he haunting these particular teens, and can you stop someone who doesn’t exist in waking life?

The new “Elm Street” wisely discards the sequels attempts at black humor, and replacing actor Robert Englund with Haley seemed bold enough to merit a reboot. Instead, the film shows far too much of the new Freddy – and a gaggle of young actors whose work here can best be described as bland.

It’s like horror for the ADD crowd – nightmare sequences pop up every 10 minutes, and so, too, does Freddy. Where is the sense of mystery, the feeling that we never know when Freddy will appear – or what he’ll do next?

The film’s dearth of imaginative set pieces is devastating to an already familiar tale. That’s a shock given the film’s director – Samuel Bayer – rose to fame by overseeing iconic music videos including “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

But the worst blunder on “Elm Street” is one recently made by “Shutter Island.” The film telegraphs when each nightmare commences, denying us of any real fright potential.

The lights flicker and fade. Day turns to night. The scenery changes from a school room to an old warehouse.

These clues let us know Freddy is around the corner. You can’t be scared when you know precisely what’s happening next.

Haley does all he can to add menace to the movie, speaking in a frightening growl and twitching his metal fingers as if he can’t wait to greet his next victim. There’s simply nothing around him that measures up to what the gifted actor can do on screen.

The film’s one new wrinkle, a tweak to the original back story, threatens to add a layer of moral complexity to the shopworn narrative. But it’s cast aside in the hurried final act.

Audiences will have no trouble falling to sleep after watching “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” unless they dream of the film sparking a new wave of sequels.

(Photo: Jackie Earle Haley plays Freddy Krueger in New Line Cinema’s horror remake “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy of New Line Cinema)

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