Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy Kruger, only the second actor to portray the iconic dream killer after Robert Englund, who originated it way back in 1984 in Wes Craven’s pioneering ‘slasher’ film.  Haley is a fine dramatic actor.  Too bad the script for this remake is so boring.  It makes no use of Haley’s abilities, and keeps him bottled up in a one dimensional trap.  New Freddy is less a character than a slasher mascot in a big cardboard suit.

Robert Englund’s Kruger was a rarity, an out and out freak of nature, an example of random evil, an ancient evil force, in human form.  The new Nightmare casts Freddy as a victim, all too human, with a guilty secret certainly, but who asks us to have empathy.  What?  Has horror gone soft? 

New Freddy sports the de riguer knife-tipped fingers, striped sweater and flash hat, and still comes a-killin’ in dreams, like his predecessor.  But new Freddy has this something new – heart.  His feelings were hurt and his sense of safety was compromised.  It’s the second time Haley has played this kind of perp, and his Freddy’s story bears a strong resemblance to Ronnie’s in Little Children.  Granted, original Freddy was neglected as a child, and it may have sparked evil fury, but he didn’t face the earthbound evil that new Freddy did as a result of his illness.  Icon or criminal?

The script is marred by repeated sojourns into cliché and it’s not a spoof.  They are unacceptable in a genre that is free to break all the rules and create new all new, boundary pushing fantasy worlds.  This is so lame, so dull, and mild that it can hardly call itself horror.  There isn’t a single fright in the film, even though there is plenty of mutilated flesh, thick syrupy blood, battered and burned people, and things that go thrash in the night.  But it all lies there like a sack of trout.  It’s a mystery for the ages, how a fine horror brand even mythology, could be a) remade to begin with, and b) fail so spectacularly.

However, and there is always a however, there are a few winning performances by Haley and Katie Cassidy and the unfortunate high school beauty, and hardworking actor Kyle Gallner, a kind of American Robert Pattinson.  Connie Britton returns to the big screen as a concerned mother who has her own secrets.  Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Friday the 13th remake, The Amityville Horror remake) produced which may explain a lot.

The cinematic look of new Freddy’s film is somewhat grander than previous Freddies, with artistic dreamscapes and crossovers from one world into another.  The corpses are prettier and the overall sensation is of ‘art’ with a small ‘a’.  But it doesn’t help.

Sure the warning says ‘strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror’,  but  trust me, it’s an exaggeration.