A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 2010 American slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer (in his feature directorial debut), written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, and starring Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, and Kellan Lutz. Produced by Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes, it is a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 film of the same name, as well as the ninth overall installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film is set in the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio and centers on a group of teenagers living on one street who are stalked and murdered in their dreams by a disfigured man named Freddy Krueger. The teenagers discover that they all share a common link from their childhood that makes them targets for Krueger.
A Nightmare on Elm Street was originally to follow the same design as Platinum Dunes' other remake, Friday the 13th (2009), where the writers took the best elements from each of the films in the original series and created a single storyline with them. Eventually, they decided to use Craven's original storyline but tried to create a scarier film. To that end, they decided to remove the one-line quipping Krueger, who had become less scary and more comical over the years, and bring back his darker nature. The writers developed the character to be a child molester, something that Craven wanted to do originally in 1984 but changed to a child killer instead. Krueger's physical appearance was changed with the use of CGI to be closer to that of a burn victim.
Because of the positive experiences Platinum Dunes' producers had in the area, A Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed primarily in Illinois. Craven expressed his displeasure when he was not consulted on the project. Robert Englund, who portrayed Freddy Krueger in the previous eight films, voiced his support of the remake and the casting of Haley in the role of Krueger.
A Nightmare on Elm Street had its world premiere at Hollywood on April 27, 2010, and was theatrically released in North America on April 30, 2010, by Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema. Despite overwhelmingly negative reviews, the film grossed over $63 million at the domestic box office and $117.7 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise.
Plot
Dean Russell falls asleep at a diner and is attacked by Freddy Krueger, a burned man wearing a bladed gardener's glove on his right hand. In the dream, the burned man cuts Dean's throat; in reality, Dean cuts his own throat as his friends Kris Fowles and Nancy Holbrook, who works in the same diner, look on in horror.
At Dean's funeral, Kris sees a photograph of herself and Dean as children but cannot recall knowing Dean before high school. She begins to have nightmares about the burned man and refuses to go to sleep for fear that she will die like Dean. Accompanied by her ex-boyfriend Jesse Braun, Kris falls asleep and is brutally murdered by the burned man. Covered in Kris's blood, Jesse runs to Nancy's house and learns that Nancy has been having nightmares about Freddy Krueger.
Jesse is arrested under suspicion of murdering Kris and is killed by Krueger in his jail cell. As her friends die, Nancy questions everyone's connection to each other, given that none of them can remember each other before their teenage years. Nancy and her friend Quentin Smith discover that they attended the same preschool. Nancy's mother, Gwen, reluctantly tells them about Krueger, the preschool's groundskeeper, who was accused of molesting the children, including Nancy, who was his favorite. Gwen alerted the other parents, including Quentin's father, Alan, but Krueger escaped. Believing there is more to the story, Nancy attempts to track down the remaining kids from the school but discovers that all of them have been killed; only she and Quentin are left. Meanwhile, Quentin falls asleep and sees a flashback of the parents, led by Alan, hunting Krueger down and burning him alive.
As a result of their insomnia, Nancy and Quentin experience sporadic microsleeps and become hypnagogic, causing them to hallucinate. To try to stop Krueger, they go to the preschool. On the way, Nancy is attacked by Krueger, during which she pulls a piece of his sweater out of her hallucination into reality. Quentin takes Nancy to the hospital, where he steals adrenaline to help them stay awake. At the preschool, the two find proof of Krueger's crimes, including crude photos. Krueger, now a vengeful ghost, wants revenge on the kids for disclosing his abuse. Nancy decides to pull Krueger out of the dream world, like she did with his sweater, and kill him. Quentin and Nancy both fall asleep and are attacked.
As Krueger goes after Nancy, her cries awaken Quentin, who uses the adrenaline to wake her. Nancy pulls Krueger with her into reality. She manages to slit his neck before torching the room with his body inside. Police, however, are unable to find Krueger's remains. After Nancy and her mother return home, Krueger appears in the mirror's reflection and kills her mother, pulling her body through the mirror as Nancy screams.
Cast
Jackie Earle Haley as Fred "Freddy" Krueger Kyle Gallner as Quentin Smith Rooney Mara as Nancy Holbrook Kyra Krumins as young Nancy Katie Cassidy as Kris Fowles Julianna Damm as young Kris Thomas Dekker as Jesse Braun Bayden Coyer as young Jesse Kellan Lutz as Dean Russell Max Holt as young Dean Clancy Brown as Alan Smith Connie Britton as Dr. Gwen Holbrook Lia Mortensen as Nora Fowles Kurt Naebig as Mr. Russell Jennifer Robers as Mrs. Russell Christian Stolte as Mr. Braun Andrew Fiscella as a Prison Inmate
Production Development In 2008, Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes production company began the process of rebooting the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with a remake of the original 1984 film. Producer Brad Fuller explained that they would follow the same tactic from their Friday the 13th remake and would abandon the things that had made the series less scary—the film's antagonist, Freddy Krueger, and would not be "cracking jokes" as had become a staple of his character. The focus was to "make a horrifying movie". Fuller said that the film is a remake of the 1984 film, but clarified that they would borrow character deaths and dream sequences from the entire series.
In February 2009, Samuel Bayer was hired to direct the film. According to New Line production chief Toby Emmerich, Michael Bay advocated heavily for Bayer because he had "the ability to capture the kind of seductive and unsettling imagery that would make Nightmare feel like a fresh, visually arresting moviegoing experience." Bayer declined Platinum Dunes' offer twice but finally accepted after Bay emailed him and explained the kind of business opportunity it would be.
In June 2009 interview, Craven, who directed the original movie and was not consulted for the remake, expressed displeasure with the new film. In contrast, Robert Englund, who portrayed Freddy throughout the film series, felt it was time for A Nightmare on Elm Street to be remade. Englund liked the idea of being able to "exploit the dreamscape" with computer-generated imagery and other technologies that did not exist when Craven made the original in 1984. Bayer believes that his film paid homage to what Craven did in 1984, but did not replicate it entirely. Bayer recognized that Craven attempted to put more meaning into his films and that the character of Freddy Krueger affected the lives of a generation of people. For Bayer, remaking A Nightmare on Elm Street was about bringing that feeling to a new generation with a new spin on the character and story.
Fuller and Form likened the new film to their 2003 remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but instead of a remake, they saw it as more of a reimagining. The pair also explained that A Nightmare on Elm Street would have a different tone than their Friday the 13th remake. Form states: "I think a Friday the 13th movie like we made was really fun. You know, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and I think a Nightmare movie is not that."
When asked why New Line was rebooting the Nightmare on Elm Street film series, Emmerich explained: "The Nightmare films are profoundly disturbing on a deep, human level because they're about our dreams. It's why we thought that we could reach an especially broad audience with a new film, since the feeling of having your dreams being invaded was something that would translate to any country and any culture." Overall, Bayer wanted to create a film in "a darker world" that made the audience ask, "What makes a monster?"—is it a monster because of its physical appearance, someone with a scarred face and a clawed glove, or is it a monster because of something deeper within the man himself?
Writing Wesley Strick was initially hired to pen a script for a new A Nightmare on Elm Street because he had impressed Emmerich with a prequel script he wrote for Seven (1995). Eric Heisserer was subsequently hired to provide a rewrite of Strick's script before the film moved into production. When Bayer came on board he received a script that reflected the combined efforts of Strick and Heisserer and which still "needed to be tinkered with". Bayer explained that the script goes deeper into "[Freddy] as a person [and] how he became the thing he was". Bayer expressed that unlike the Friday the 13th remake that picked the best parts from the first four films, the Nightmare on Elm Street remake was coming straight from the first film.
Earlier versions of the script had Freddy revealed to have been falsely accused of the molestation allegations he was burned alive for thus giving a new spin to his motivation to kill the children and later the parents in a future sequel.
For the remake, Freddy was brought back to his darker roots and away from the comical character he had become in later A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. Fuller pointed out that this Freddy did have one-liners but they come from a darker sense of humor and were not intended to be as campy as in previous films. Craven's original characterization of Freddy as a child molester was used because if Freddy killed children, as in the original, it would have been easy for the teenage characters to figure out using the Internet what had happened. In an effort to keep the story fresh, Heisserer developed the concept of micro-naps because the dream-reality sequences could become repetitive. The micro-nap allowed them to "blur reality and the dream world, and get some great scares".
In March 2019, Heisserer had expressed his dislike for the finished product and spoke of the film's production: "On my first day on set, a crew member told me, 'In this intro scene for the two leads, we decided there wasn't enough dialogue for them at this party so we took some dialogue from page 87 and put it here'". In a follow-up tweet, Heisserer wrote "In case you were wondering, this is NOT how it works".
Casting
Robert Englund did not reprise the role of Freddy Krueger for the remake despite having performed the role for the eight previous films. Jackie Earle Haley was cast to take over Englund's most well-known role in April 2009. Initially, the studio wanted to cast an unknown for the role of Freddy Krueger, but it was Haley's performance in Little Children (2006) that impressed Emmerich enough to cast the actor against the original intentions. Emmerich explained: "Freddy is this incredible stew of malevolence and anger, but he also has a hint of vulnerability, and Jackie really has all of that and more. He just seemed completely right for the part." Bayer stated that he and producers Form and Fuller managed to acquire the screen test Haley gave as Rorschach for Watchmen; after viewing it, Bayer said it "blew [his] mind", and that he knew Haley would be able to go deep and create a believable character who was a psychopath "with a burned face and a claw."