COMMENTARY CLUB - Valentines Special 2025 - My Bloody Valentine

For our traditionally highly inappropriate Valentine's Day special, we are watching the 2009 remake of My Bloody Valentine starring Jenson Ackles and Jaime King, numerous pickaxes, and roughly sixty gallons of blood... 

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HITTING THE WALL - Various Nightmares on Elm Street

One, two, spoilers coming for you...

The world of dreams is an enigmatic place, which despite our ever increasing knowledge remains a sanctuary of mysteries. And there is one particular puzzle that has always interested me – considering literally anything can happen in a dream, from my researches it would seem that meeting characters from fiction is surprisingly rare. Monsters and fantastic beasts occur frequently, but encountering fictional characters is more uncommon than you’d expect, and generally when a dreamer bumps into a well known figure from the movies or TV, they are meeting the actor rather than the fiction made dream flesh.

However there is one notable exception - Mr Frederick Krueger. Certainly for my generation, who were present for the start of the Elm Street franchise, whenever the subject of really scary movies or just nightmares in general surfaced, it seemed that everybody had a tale to tell of having a Freddy dream not long after seeing Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. This was mine…

During the usual dream shenanigans, I happened to notice a door in my home that wasn’t usually there. And obeying one of those strange compulsions so common in the dream world, I felt drawn to open it and discovered a decrepit staircase leading down into the bowels of the earth. This stairwell led down into an impossibly huge room, dimly lit with orange light and wreathed with smoke. Well, I say ‘room’ but ‘space’ might be a better term, for its dimensions were so vast that I couldn’t actually see its bounding walls and the whole expanse was completely featureless. It was completely empty except for a dark square in the centre, radiating a magnetic call to investigate further. As I drew closer, the ominous shape resolved itself into a large cage wrought from thick black iron. Inside the cage was a familiar figure, chuckling and scrapping his metal talons against the pitted bars. With that strange instant background knowledge we possess in dreams, I suddenly knew that this was the real deal - not just the movie’s creation come to life, but the the ‘real’ Freddy, an evil entity that had somehow inspired Craven in order to increase its powers and influence. Time began to slow down, the seconds sludging along as he turned his gaze in my direction, and with a malefic twinkle in his eye, rasped “Hey kid, let me through… C’mon let me out!”

Needless to say, it was at that point, I turned and ran, pelting back up the crooked stairs and all the way back to the waking world. I vividly remember sitting up in bed and being somewhat weirded out; not just from having met Mr Krueger himself but from the nightmare’s unsettling postmodern spin that implied that Craven’s character was in fact a real being. And years later, this dream span my head a second time when I saw New Nightmare in which Craven presents us with the exact same scenario.

What all which neatly illustrates how well Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare On Elm Street taps into something powerful that resonated with a generation. It’s a real testament to the power of what he created in that first film that was Freddy to made guest appearances in so many viewers’ dreams. Equally it’s a fairly damning reflection of the trajectory of the series that with each sequel Freddy became less likely to inspire a bad night’s sleep. The embodiment of all our bad dreams quickly lost the fright factor, becoming an unlikely horror hero, cracking jokes rather breaking the walls of reality, spawning toys galore and even rapping with Will Smith.

However despite his huge fanbase and metamorphosis into a pop culture icon, fans of the first film have consistently clamoured for another film in which he was as twisted and frightening as he is Craven’s original. The afore-mentioned New Nightmare in 1994 was an interesting but flawed attempt to put the fright back into Freddy. But this exercise in post modern horror largely fell flat; confusing audiences who couldn’t tell whether it was a reboot or another sequel in the franchise, and coming so soon after the abomination that was Freddy’s Dead – The Final Nightmare (1991) didn’t exactly help either.

Of course this wasn’t the last time we would see Mr Krueger, for 2003 brought us Ronnie Yu’s highly entertaining Freddy Vs Jason. Though in development hell for years and years, this epic clash of the slashers actually turned out better than anyone could have hoped, and provided a very fitting close to both franchises. The Freddy presented in this swansong was a neat synthesis of all his incarnations; managing to be threatening and funny. But he was still far from the nightmare personified of the original.

Now when Platinum Dunes announced they were green-lighting a remake, the initial reaction wasn’t exactly rapturous as their previous forays into remaking the recent classics of horror can only be described as a mixed bag at best. However with the casting of Jackie Earle Haley, who’d impressed all and sundry Little Children and winning fanboy hearts with his rendering of Rorschach in Watchmen, hopes began to rise. Would we see Freddy reborn as the disturbing master of nightmares once more?

The short answer – apparently not! Long and bitter have been the howls of protest and the rivers of bile have run thick and deep. Indeed the one thing the new A Nightmare On Elm Street has convincing demonstrated is that if you want to clean up in these financial hard times, then before the new remake of a classic comes out set up a dummy retrieval and toy recovery service!

This reaction wasn’t exactly a surprise to me, as for many movie geeks the very concept of remakes is anathema and the involvement of Michael Bay on any project is about as welcome as a leper in a swimming pool. But while Samuel Bayer’s film is far from a triumph, and my own problems with it are legion, I can’t help feeling that it doesn’t deserve the level of vitriol it has received…

Now for those of you whose blood pressure is now rising, take a deep breathe and relax, for I am not going to try and convince you that this is a modern masterpiece. Believe me, I feel your pain and I have a fair bit of vitriol of my own to dish up…

So what’s wrong with this flick? My initial reaction to the movie was to wonder how long the original cut Bayer turned in was, as the pacing of the script is just ridiculously fast. While a swift pace is exactly what you want from a popcorn movie, the narrative itself had been edited down to a foolishly anorexic degree. The characters seem to be leaping to conclusions very quickly, discovering too much by convenient coincidence and often I felt we were only seeing snippets of what was actually filmed. The result is that the plot now is playing second fiddle to the action, which is not ideal for a movie that is trying to construct an atmospheric mystery for the characters to unravel.

And a lot of people have flagged up the acting as being fairly ropey. But in all honesty, we shouldn’t be expecting Royal Shakespeare Company level performances in a pop horror movie. And although the horror genre is often criticised from the low quality acting, in fairness the performances in most popcorn movies across the board aren’t much better. The source of this inequality is that in order to delivers the scares, the horror film needs the audience to suspend their disbelief far more than other genres and hence weak or lacklustre performances become all the more noticeable.

Now the performances in the new Nightmare On Elm Street are variable to say the least. However I’m inclined to blame the presentation over the performances. With so many scenes being seemingly truncated and slimmed down in the edit, a lot of the time we are getting reactions with no dramatic build up. But on top of this, Bayer is forever going in for close ups and lingering shots when the actor isn’t actually doing much. Hence the cast is left see-sawing between shouting and looking blank. And all of this is exactly helped by the casting choices which draw heavily from the CW’s roster, so you spend a good deal of time distracted playing the ‘isn’t that so-and-so off of…’ game.

However aside from the disservice the pace does the film’s characters, the story itself is somewhat problematic. Although the general thrust of the new storyline is fine but its intriguing twist on the Krueger mythos is botched at best. While it is an interesting idea that Freddy may be an innocent man in theory, it just doesn’t really float as by the time they wheel out this concept, as they’ve already shown him to be thoroughly evil. The pre-twist Krueger is clearly a sadist so it’s difficult to buy his actions as the revenge of an innocent man.

Secondly the decision to make him explicitly a child molester was somewhat ill judged. In the original film and sequels, although there were hints that there was a sexual element to his crimes, he was more clearly labelled as a child killer but the Haley version is a typical molester. Now while this is the realisation of what Craven originally intended for his villain and it plays well for the twist that he may be innocent, it doesn’t really feel right that he only becomes a murderer after his death. And while the molestation gives the new Freddy a far more repulsive streak, it comes across as somewhat distasteful as the film just doesn’t have the narrative depth to fully justify the inclusion of this sensitive and complex subject.

More baffling though, is Platinum Dunes obviously aren’t just remaking the original; they want to kick-start a new franchise and Haley has been signed for a three picture deal. But in making Freddy the most reviled form of criminal, I can’t exactly see people being keen to embrace Freddy as an anti hero – as the guys at the Now Playing podcast remarked in their review, this is a Freddy you probably won’t want to dress up as at Halloween. More to the point, it’s hard to see where the sequels are going to come from; in this movie, his motivations are to get revenge on the kids who shopped him and he succeeds in wiping them all out bar Nancy. While this works fine for a stand alone film, you’d think that if they were planning a new franchise they would introduce more room to expand the mythos in sequels.

And I have further problems with the new Freddy – basically I just didn’t really like the new make-up. Yes it was arguably a more realistic burn victim look and the quality of the physical make up effects with a little CGI was decent enough, but the overall result was that it robbed Haley’s distinctive face of all its character. Now the great strength of the original Freddy was Robert Englund’s face; with the various appliances and latex exaggerating his features, his Freddy had a pleasing echo of the story book wicked witch, all furrowed brows, hooked nose and gnarled cheekbones. The new Freddy’s look however, while perhaps medically accurate, loses this archetypal flourish.

And speaking of effects… Oh Christ the wall scene! This was what post Wolf Man I term a ‘bear’, and boy was this a bear of colossal proportions, and a veritable gift to CGI haters to boot. On the whole the movie’s special effects work was decently rendered, but this amazing wall paper patterned Play-Doh Freddy really lets the side down. However it does highlight my final problem with this remake – namely that when they redo scenes from the original, the new version fails to equal them, let alone better them. More to the point, it actually badly fluffs most of them.

To use the wall scene as an example, even ignoring the quality of the CGI – it was awful shite, let it go and move on – this scene is still a massive fumble. In the original, this early incursion by Freddy is presaged by a crucifix falling from the wall. A small detail perhaps, and evidently one that was considered unnecessary by Bayer and co, but this little touch adds so much. It’s a concise but potent symbol, a harbinger of evil invading our safe, everyday world. Similarly the aftermath is also omitted in the remake, where Nancy having sensed Freddy looming over her sleepily checks the wall is in fact still solid and hangs the cross back in place. And in missing these bookends, the remake’s version fails to convey the same sense of reality bending and approaching menace – instead all we have is a badly rendered Freddy composed of chintz, and instead of peering down like some hellish spider ready to drop, he oozes out and waves hello. Thanks guys, thanks for nothing…

However this does neatly bring me to the crossroads of this review, where at midnight I’ll be making a deal with the Devil’s Advocate. The smoking light is now on and you all may start fuming… though the Captain points out there may be further turbulence ahead.

You see as ham-fisted as the wall scene is, and indeed it was the low point of the entire film as well as the nadir of the effects work, the remake did do other things rather well. No, don’t run off! Think about it – the whole film could have been like this! A lot of people were of the opinion that the advances in digital effects could really benefit the Elm Street franchise and subsequently complained there wasn’t more of the surreal dream world action. But on the strength of this scene I’m really glad they stuck to Freddy slashing with his glove. If they had gone in for the high strangeness dram transformation deaths of the later films, just imagine how awful it could have been… Cruddy CGI slurping all over the shop in a silly fashion coupled with the corny comedian version of Krueger. It could have easily been the bastard child of Freddy’s Dead and Transformers 2 in other words.

And imagining that hideous scenario makes you quite relieved we got what we did. While it may make a pig’s ear of the scenes it replays from the original, it’s only really guilty of dropping the ball. As remakes go, it is at least is trying to hit the same marks as the original, unlike the twin Nicolas Cage atrocities The Wicker Man and City of Angels that not only miss the magic and charm of the originals but all the main themes, and indeed the entire point of the first movies. The film may have its failings but at least it’s failing in the right areas.

As I said earlier, it does do some things right, and very tellingly, its best material comes when it isn’t cribbing from Craven’s original. For me, it was very much a film of two halves. After the halfway mark, the movie’s break-neck pacing ceases to be such a problem; now it is logical for the story to be galloping along and pounding the action beats. And by that point I was actually getting used to the new look Freddy. But most importantly, while in the opening half, I was constantly comparing it to the original around the mid point we actually entered fresh territory story-wise.

Although the ‘is he innocent?’ twist is somewhat illogical Captain (sorry, Pavlovian response there), the introduction of micro naps is a neat touch. Being something of an insomniac, I can vouch for the existence of micro sleep (to give it its proper title) and the rules of sleep deprivation are handled far more realistically than in the old series. In fact, I’m actually amazed no other screen writer hit on this phenomenon before as it does make for a great plot gimmick. And the reveal of Freddy’s ultimate aims to drive his victims into permanent comas, while being the point at which the scientific facts in the film depart from reality, is a superbly nasty twist.

In short, the second half is a great improvement on the first and consequently by the time the credits rolled I was firmly of the opinion that despite its faults this remake is really does not deserve the level of hatred it has provoked. Yes, it has flaws, and overall I’m inclined to judge it ‘competent’ rather than ‘good’. But it nowhere near as bad as many are making out – certainly I was expecting far, far worse - and while it isn’t the Elm Street remake I was hoping for, there is a major factor that has made me think long and hard about my judgements on the movie…

I saw this at a packed Friday night screening with the theatre filled to the rafters with the target audience for this flick i.e. people several decades my junior. And they loved it, delightedly screaming at the jump scares and trooped out buzzing about the movie - a reaction that made me think and reconsider my problems with the film.

And my first thought was that aren’t all the cautiously voiced hopes for the remake very revealing. For those of us who didn’t don their pointy hater hats the instant we heard there was going to be a remake, when we talked of possibility of the remake actually turning out good, aren’t we hoping for a film that will top the original? And in doing so are we not implicitly and/or unconsciously acknowledging that the Wes Craven original despite its classic status is actually flawed?

Hence, after leaving a good few days in between for the sake of fairness, I rescreened the original. So in this light, let’s reassess the remake’s flaws…

Right then, the acting – as stated earlier I do think it’s a case of poor framing and editing that make the characters not work me. Certainly there are no performances as bad as, say, Mark Walberg in the Planet of the Apes remake, who could have been replaced with a balloon on a stick. And it has to be said there are some far rougher performances in the original. And pound for pound both films are equally slim in the character development stakes - there’s been a lot of moaning that the kids in the remark are boring and too emo, well in fairness the kids in the original aren’t exactly brimming with depth and are cookie cutter ‘80s twonks. In terms of realism both sets of teens bear little resemblance to the real thing and the only thing the original has over the remake is that they look a little more like the ages they are supposed to playing – but twenty somethings playing teens is a common problem in movies and TV. Hence I’m awarding a draw here.

On a related point, a big difference between the two films, and a major source of griping, is that the Nancy character in the remake is far mousier than in Craven’s film. Now in both films, Nancy is meant to be mousy as Bayer follows in Craven’s footsteps in doing the Psycho switch - introducing a pretty blonde who we are meant to assume is the heroine and then kicking her. The complaining about the new Nancy are mainly due I think to the omission of her fight back sequence. Now I did feel that Bayer’s flick was not only missing a trick but binning a key sequence in not having her booby trap her home turf before pulling Krueger out of the dream world. But thinking further on the matter and bearing in mind the age of the target market, if they had recreated these scenes would have been rolling their eyes thinking it was a lame Home Alone rip-off.

Moving swiftly on, the script and pacing issues. In the early minutes of the remake, I was thinking the kids were working out that Freddy was hunting them in their dreams way too quickly but the original does do the same. However I would say that the original does it more smoothly, but crucially there are the same leaps in logic. Similarly we have no explanation why Freddy has suddenly returned all these years later or where he got his powers from. And while in the remake you might be wondering how none of kids remember the events of their shared childhood, this plot hole is nothing compared to making sense of the climax of the original. Not only is Nancy’s defeating Freddy by turning her back on him likely to push the WTF button for some viewers but the twist ending leaves you wondering what actually happened in all the preceding scenes.

Next then – the effects work. Ok the remake’s amazing wibbly-wobbly shite-whitey wall is awful and there’ll be no U-turning on that. But in the original Freddy’s stretchy-wetchy arms and the slurpy-wurpy tongue phone aren’t exactly stellar either. And while you could say that it’s just because they are the products of an earlier age of special effects, I’d have to counter that they didn’t look great back in the day. So on a technical level, both films have rough spots in the effects wizards’ work.

However that damn wall yet again raises a key point – I’m seriously considering this review ‘It’s All About The Wall’ - as we saw earlier, the remake’s rendition of this scene is lousy compared to the masterful way Craven handled it. And this is true of everything the remake redoes from the original – Bayer just doesn’t craft the scenes as well as Craven did. But, and here’s the thing, this is only a problem if you know the original. And I’m guessing that the majority of the audience at my screening hadn’t seen the first film once, let alone the countless times I’ve seen it since blagging my way into a showing at the local fleapit under age way back in the 1980s.

Now despite picking at the Craven original in the last few paragraphs, I love this movie to bits and for me it will always be the better film hands down. But trying to be objective, I’d have to say that on a technical level both are equally flawed. But also both deliver a strong villain, who is disgusting and scary and a stream of effective horror sequences that gloss over their faults. I’d like to think that anyone who’s seen the remake and then checks out the very first film will conclude that Craven does it better but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The concepts and premises of A Nightmare on Elm Street work so well because you don’t know what’s going on. And I think the general tendency may well be to prefer whichever you saw first, while the uncertainty has novelty. Originally Craven intended his film to stand alone and was opposed to the idea of sequels, and I’m guessing is that he understood that once you know how Freddy operates, you lose all the intrigue and the fear that come from not knowing what is doing on. Now a word that keeps cropping up time and time again in the negative reviews of the remake is ‘boring’, but honestly it’s only boring for so many because they’ve seen the original. But if you’re coming to this completely fresh, it’s a different movie - as evidenced by the positive audience reaction at my screening.

Now I stick with my overall assessment that Bayer’s film is competent and nothing more; for me it fails to equal the original let alone better it. But they weren’t making this flick for old gits like me; this is a Freddy for a new generation who are new to the whole Elm Street mythos. And I even wonder that left-over gripes that aren’t rooted in a familiarity with the original, such as the high speed pacing are just the carping of an old fool – for better or worse movies these days are far faster than they used to be.

As Kim Newman points out in the introduction of Nightmare Movies there tends to be generational divides in horror criticism. Early commentators like Dennis Gifford and William K. Everson, held that the 1920s and 1930s produced the classics and later films from Hammer and Amicus were inferior retreads. Later younger writers such as Alan Frank extended the classic period to include the ‘50s and ‘60s but were dismissive of ‘70s and ‘80s shockers for being too full of breasts and blood. And now it seems we have a generation weaned on ‘80s horror bitching about the new films being too fast and flashy.

Hence as much as I think the new Nightmare on Elm Street charges ahead too swiftly and is sacrificing atmosphere and character for pace, is it really doing anything that wrong? I mean if you want to see a flick where action and pace totally make a nonsense of anything approaching sense, let alone a story, go no further than Transformers 2. Bayer’s film might come across as hasty but it’s nowhere near the colossal awfulness of Bay’s last paean to hyperactivity. And I do suspect there is a longer version that’s better paced – my gut instinct is that what we have got is a truncated cut to fit what Platinum Dunes’ demographics think is the optimum length for the target audience – which would make the pacing issues their fault not Bayer’s. I’ll be very interested to see if a director’s cut emerges…

But the pacing aside, considering he’s a former video director, some credit must go to Bayer for not delivering a movie that was comprised of jump cuts and crash zooms every five seconds and filling the score with bad emo/metal. Instead he tries to make a proper horror movie in the classic mould rather pander to the teen market with a load of hip visuals set to ‘edgy’ rock music that will go out of date faster than a loaf of bread. But instead he get’s slated for being conventional. Admittedly there are far more innovative directors out there and Bayer lacks real vision but it’s evident he studied the form. While his imagination may be lacking, he knew enough to avoid some of the worst clichés.

And he’s also got tons of flack for using jump scares. Yes, they are a cheap scare and he relies on them a lot but they are by no means the lowest trick in the book - that would be just shovelling out the gore and going for the gross out. And in all fairness, there are more than a few jump scares in the original. More to the point, when did jump scares become such a bad thing? Just as it is very fashionable among mainstream critics to write off blockbusters or genre films for using CGI, in the horror world now it’s a case of use a jump scare and you’re a talentless bastard.

But the original Halloween is built on them – and no one slates that movie for it. Actually I suspect Bayer studied that classic very closely, as he plays with light and shadows and tries to misdirect the audience in a Carpenter-esque fashion. And in the chase sequence at the finale, he has Nancy hiding in a cupboard with a white slatted door which struck me as a tip of the fedora to Halloween. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the Carpenter classic is Bayer’s idea of the perfect horror movie. He might not have Carpenter’s directing chops but I will give him credit for doing his homework.

At the end of the day, I would far rather have film makers try and make you jump out of your seat than just chuck up into your pop corn, and fill the runtime with the kind of gratuitous nastiness that gives the genre a bad name. And here where the remake could have been a lot worse too – with the Saw series being the franchise to top, we easily could have got Freddy Opens a Hostel.

What seasoned film buffs and horror heads alike forget is that ghost train jump scares or a ton of gore are what a general audience expects from a horror movie. Average movie goers aren’t going to flock to see intelligent carnage like Martyrs and purer fright films such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity have a good proportion of the popcorn munching crowd decrying as rubbish because “you didn’t see anything”. Now the new Nightmare on Elm Street treads a decent line between gore and fear, and while Bayer plays the jump card too often when he should be building dread, it is still hitting the both important marks for the general audience.

And that’s exactly who Platinum Dunes are made this flick for. Yes, it’s not the remake I wanted but really when a studio sets out to do a remake – putting the rights and wrongs of that aside for moment - they are not making the movie for lovers of the original. They aren’t really interested in putting a fresh spin on material that worked perfectly well the first time just for the old guard; they just want to retell the story for a new generation.

And for all the faults I can find with the remake, I have to concede that Bayer’s film does do that. It’s flawed but it delivers enough to work. With most of the retread material being in the first half I can totally understand why it loses the interest of so many reviewers who are familiar with the original, and I’m guessing the wall scene (damn it! there it is again) is where many lock into in hate mode. But if you don’t know the original inside out, you’re not sat playing compare and contrast and the wall is just a brief moment of sub par CGI.

Even if the remake isn’t improving on the original and suffers from a hasty pace, it at least honours the intentions of the original film, serving up some memorable dream weirdness and it does get Freddy right. Jackie Earle Haley makes a fantastic Krueger, menacing, vicious and actually scary. I might think he looks more like Niki Lauda than Fred Krueger, you can’t fault the performance. And while some, including myself, have lamented that the script didn’t give Haley more material to get his teeth into, but really the role of Freddy doesn’t offer that much scope for dramatics. Of course a different script could have included more material that builds the character and his back-story, but really Freddy should stay in the shadows - after all, look how well Rob Zombie’s attempt to give Michael Myers more depth went down…

Personally I’m just glad they went back to basics and made Krueger a scary monster again, rather than bring him back as the jokester of the later films. Admittedly they did toss in a few quips, mainly in the second half, that I could have lived without but they did keep the bad gags to a bare minimum and I’m guessing included them as a sop to the fans that prefer the comedy incarnation. But it was Haley’s excellent rendering of the character that got me through the weaker first half when I was mainly rummaging through the baggage I brought to the theatre. So I’ll happily take the Haley Krueger, new make up and all, over the Freddies from Elm Street 2, 4, 5 and 6 any day of the week.

And despite its faults the remake is a far better film than any of the sequels listed above. Now as I promised at the beginning of this epic dissection, I’m not trying to persuade all of you who disliked it that Bayer’s film is a great movie. But to all those who are proclaiming it’s the worst thing ever and an insult to Freddy, really, get a grip. If you hated it, fine – I didn’t exactly love it myself - but in some cases the level of bile has been way over the top. Essentially I’m arguing for some clemency here – there are far worse horror films out there and much poorer remakes. And like it or not, there going be young movie goers who will love this flick as much as I love the original. And perhaps that is what is most important here.

In my similarly lengthy article on last year's Friday 13th, I spent a good deal of time identifying different species of remake and Freddy is one of those characters who can come back again and again. Like his cinematic rivals Jason and Michael Meyers, his film series consisted of sequels that were more remakes than additional instalments of his story. So really retelling the story was not the key issue - the big question was could another actor convincingly fill his shoes?

Whereas Jason or Michael Myers can be played by any big ‘n’ burly guy, Freddy is very closely tied to Englund’s performance. We all accept that Freddy is one of the Famous Horror Characters like Dracula and Frankenstein but could the glove be passed on in the same way the cloak and fangs went from Lugosi to Lee? Or would it be another case of Pink Panther syndrome, where Steve Martin has proved that it’s not the character of Clouseau we love but Peter Sellers’ performances.

Some die hard haters may not accept Haley as Freddy, however if we’d had the internet back in 1958, I’d bet we’d see similar torrents of bile from Lugosi fans. But a decent proportion of the negative reviewers do concede that Jackie Earle Haley makes a good Freddy. And regardless of your feelings about the rest of the film, this remake has proved that some one other than Robert Englund can play Krueger. But this is the Bayer film’s real achievement – it shows it can be done, and hence now the field is wide open for him to return again and again, with a new actor bringing the character to fresh generations. Freddy now can truly join the pantheon of Immortal Monsters, and I have no doubt that he’ll be haunting the dreams of many generations to come. Many may not love this first resurrection, but it has been a success, and the door is now firmly open for a future version that might top Craven’s original…

THE WOLF MAN (2010)

Even a critic who is pure in heart,
And watches films at night,
May let some spoilers slip,
While penning spurious shite!

It’s been a very long road that has brought Larry Talbot back to the screen. Unlike his fellow Universal monsters Dracula and Frankenstein who have both enjoyed frequent revivals over the decades, cinema’s iconic tormented lycanthrope was not based on a literary work with its rights in the public domain. So although many of the werewolf movies that followed over the years have borrowed the character template created back in 1941, Larry himself hasn’t seen the light of the moon since 1948. Even when Universal decided to bring back their old horrors in the latter day monster rally Van Helsing (2004), the werewolvery on display wasn’t courtesy of Mr Talbot.

But in 2006, Universal announced that at long last it was slating a remake of The Wolf Man and as events unfolded it looked like the property was as cursed as Larry himself. There was a pack of directors circling around the director’s chair after the original choice, Mark Romanek left citing creative differences. Eventually Joe Johnston landed the gig, the script was rewritten and shooting finally began. However even then it was far from plain sailing – the production was delayed several times as reshoots were done, effects tweaked, the score was mucked about with several times, and veteran editor Walter Murch brought onboard put the film through its final transformation.

Now I was initially quite excited about his project, especially when they announced that the make up work was to be handled by the great Rick Baker and Benicio del Toro was in the frame to play Larry Talbot. However after the seemingly never ending merry go round of changes and alterations, I was beginning to wonder whether this flick would ever make it into the theatres at all. And when the film opened, Joe Johnston announcing that the disc release would feature a director’s cut featuring an extra seventeen minutes didn’t exactly inspire confidence. So when it finally arrived at the local fleapit, before going in I had not so much lowered my expectations as beat them to death with a silver headed cane.

Now Joe Johnston has received a fair bit of flak, a good deal even before the film’s release, for being a journeyman director. However since seeing the movie, I have to say he’s done a remarkable job in riding out all the waves and what actually appears on screen is far better than we had any right to expect, especially considering the production history. And while The Wolf Man is not going to garner any awards or go down as a classic of cinema, it is does work well within its own parameters.

And let’s be clear on what these parameters are - The Wolf Man is a monster movie pure and simple. It might be a horror film but it’s not really trying to terrify you or incubate a phobia of lycanthropes. Of course, many hardened horror heads were hoping for a proper hardcore horror; whether that would be a darker more psychological piece, or a brutalist retelling of the tale with viscera everywhere, or just a film with real terror rather than ghost train shocks. But The Wolf Man is aiming for none of these things - rather it’s out to serve up a gothic themed popcorn muncher, with everything a general audience expects of such of a creature feature – plenty of action, some gore, and a few jump scares. In short, the emphasis is on fun rather than fear.

And though some fans will be muttering about the watering down of the genre for the multiplex audience, as a creature feature The Wolf Man does succeed. Now it’s not a perfect film, and I’ll be the first to concede that it could have better, but it does entertain consistently through its running time.

So what does The Wolf Man get right? First up, it stays broadly true to the original - it retains the period setting and carrries over many of the elements present in Curt Siodmak's screenplay for the 1941 film. Stand out differences are the inclusion of the full moon's role in lycanthropy and jettisoning the original's folklore surrounding the pentagram. Also the role of the gypsies in the story is lessened - possibly this is an issue with the edit released in theatres but more likely I suspect the Maleva character smacked too much of horror cliches and possibly the Romany band of the original would appear at somewhat ethnically insensitive if not for modern audiences then certainly for Universal's lawyers.

However the changes still well within the story, as despite being cut from the whole cloth of the original, this version of the Wolf Man tale put a neat twist on the tale. And it manages to admirably to be a fairly faithful remake of the first film but bringing a new version of the story to the screen.

The look of the movie is simply fantastic. It recreates Victorian England rather nicely and in this respect it does trump the original. The decision to film in England pays off in style; for example, it would have been very easy to go the CGI route and mock up the Talbot estate but actually filming at a real stately home gives the film an authentic weight that digital trickery often lacks. Plus by extensively filming in a variety of UK locations, Johnston gets to make good use of the surrounding landscape which adds considerably to the atmosphere of Englishness. Now that might seem a small nebulous point but I do think that if they had opted to film somewhere else – and let’s be frank, England isn’t the cheapest country in the world to make a movie in – you would lose something.

While still on the look of the film, I also did sense that the designers and set dressers were aiming a little more historical accuracy than the usual Hollywood period London drowned in pea soupers and gaslights. For example, the depiction of the gypsy encampment was noticeably more down at heel and ragged rather than the standard travelling fair cliché that we usually see whenever a script calls for Romany or carnival locations.

I do have one set/location related quibble though, which is the Talbot house itself was slightly over dressed for my taste. Within the framework of the story, the hall should be somewhat overgrown, reflecting the fact that Sir John Talbot has misplaced a few of his marbles over the years, but it was also at little too close to the old screen cliché that the monster’s home must look like hell on toast. You could have scaled back the ivy choked exterior and toned down the accumulating detritus indoors and retained the same effect. Less would have been more, and the Talbots’ home would have meshed better with the rest of the onscreen world.

Anyhow, amid all this rather lush scenery, we have a fairly decent cast, and no one seems to have enrolled in the Dick Van Dyke Gor Blimey Guv’nor school of acting prior to the cameras rolling thankfully. Sir Anthony Hopkins puts in a good turn and generally chews the scenery far less than I was expecting. Emily Blunt makes for a fine Victorian lady though I did feel she was a little under used – but more on that later. And Hugo Weaving is as excellent as Inspector Fred Abberline as you’d expect him to be; yet again he shows his range in creating a fresh character with an entirely different voice and mannerisms to his previous roles and pretty much steals most of the scenes he’s in. He even looks uncannily like the real Abberline.

Of course the big issue is Benicio del Toro as Larry Talbot. Now when I first heard the casting news, although I respect del Toro immensely as an actor, I did wonder whether he could pull off playing an English gentleman – after all, accents are a tricky beast and in the past many a fine actor has struggled, and in some case fallen badly, in mastering a voice pattern from outside there their native lands. Would the new Wolf Man end up too closely emulating the original 1941 version with a blatantly non-Brit playing the son of an English lord?

Of course, I needn’t have worried – del Toro hits all the correct cadences without obviously attempting to force an English accent. And though the story does include a little detail to explain why he looks a touch less British than his father, there is a certain family resemblance to Hopkins. On paper, it shouldn’t work but when you see them on screen together you can believe they are related – of course the strength of the performances create this illusion in the main but they do have strangely similar facial features in some respects. Indeed, they are a far better match as father and son than Chaney and Rains ever were.

However on the subject of similarities, del Toro appears to be actually channelling Lon Chaney Jr. Now Benicio is a huge fan of the original Wolf Man movies and you can tell he’s studied his predecessor in depth for the role. Though his Lawrence Talbot is more brooding than Chaney, he emanates the same troubled aura of melancholy, with the torment visible in the eyes and hang dog expression. And as his wolfish alter ego, he brings a far greater physicality to the role and deeper sense of rage to the monster.

This brings us nicely to the depiction of the Wolf Man. Now obviously the effects work by Rick Baker is as every bit as good as you’d expect it to be, and he's has done an excellent job in modernising Jack Pierce’s original designs for the 21st century. But equally obviously, the transformation sequences just don’t have the wow factor of his previous work on American Werewolf in London. The trouble is we’ve all seen these kind of physical transmogrifications done to death by every man and his dog in the intervening years. However the sequences do look fantastic, with none of the glaringly obvious CGI that often blights such scenes.

Sadly though, not all the digital effects in this movie are as skilfully blended as the transformations. In the main, where the CGI doesn’t work as well is in some occasional moments of the London scenes, particularly the rooftop chase. Now in fairness, here The Wolf Man never plunges into the screamingly obvious levels of digital scene creation that marred similar rooftop sequences in The Incredible Hulk but the smoking skyline doesn’t always feel quite real enough.

However there is a truly awful bit of CGI in this flick, and it's very much the low point of the entire movie – that damned bear. Now the problem here isn’t that the ursine in question is particularly badly animated or rendered, the trouble is it doesn’t look like a real bear when we see it up close! For the screen time it has, it surely would have been cheaper to matte in footage of a real bear than create this digital porridge hunter.

Now I appreciate that real bears are quite difficult to work with (getting stuch in honey trees and trying to flog you Hofmeister) and a continuing problem for CGI effects is animating fur realistically, but this creature tossed me out of the movie so hard I felt like bloody Goldilocks. And from now on, I propose that any such cringingly bad piece of CGI should be dubbed ‘a bear’…

And if you are wondering why the bear is in there at all, I think it’s one of the many nods to the original movie. The 1941 Wolf Man was supposed to include a scene at the gypsy camp where a bitten but pre-change Larry wrestles a tame bear as part of a fair ground contest. However the real bear the studio brought in was not keen on being in show biz and after two days shooting the scene was scrapped. Maybe they were considering riffing on this lost scene and planning a fight scene with Paddington’s feral cousin and the werewolf but decided against it when they saw the CG work… In which case, we all dodged a silver bullet there.

But just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, neither does one dodgy bruin a bad movie make. And the fluctuations in the overall quality of the special effects aren’t the movie’s real problem. The major flaw as far I’m concerned is the plotting. Now don’t get me wrong The Wolf Man bounds along at a brisk speed and is properly punctuated so you are never far away from some action or a story development. However the film seems to sacrifice a little too much drama for the sake of pace, and it is here that all the production’s tortuous development history makes itself felt.

It doesn’t really spend enough time developing the relationships in the story, hence my earlier remarks about Emily Blunt – we only get enough on screen to superficially sell the romance between Lawrence and Gwen. And similarly, in the spiky relationship with his father, I felt that there was more dramatic mileage there than was actually delivered. And in trimming down this material, presumably in the name of tempo, it effectively weakens the opening sections and more crucially the last act. The climatic battle between Lawrence and Sir John feels a little overshadowed by the London rampage as all we are left with is the action; as their relationship has been dramatically under weighted in the rest of the film, this confrontation lacks the emotional wallop it should have had. And more seriously, as the Lawrence/Gewn relationship is undercooked, we don’t get enough to establish any real pathos for the finale where Gwen must kill Lawrence to save him.

As it stands the story functions ok, but with some more flesh on its bones it would work a whole lot better. The crux of The Wolf Man story is Talbot’s struggle for humanity, and if we were to see more scenes that emphasised his emotional conflicts then the film’s narrative would work on a deeper level than the slightly hokey one it currently does.

Interestingly, in the extended cut has assembled for the disc release, Johnston has confirmed that the extra quarter of an hour mainly comprises of character driven sequences rather than extra action and gore (click here for details). All of which confirms the suspicion I had when watching the movie that there were a few scenes missing here and there, and especially in the first half. It will be interesting to see how differently the longer plays and I think we’ll see a version that sports superior performances and deeper drama, a movie that builds more evenly to its finish.

One final quibble though, and one that I doubt the longer cut will fix, is the very end of the movie where we are left wondering if Abberline is to be the next werewolf. Now although I’d be more than happy go and see Weaving as the Wolf Man, and indeed it would be great to see him in a lead role, I do have a couple of problems with that.

Firstly, we’ve just got Larry Talbot back and a great actor, Benicio del Toro in the role. So if you want a sequel, raise him up from the grave. It’s not hard, just steal the opening from Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to see what Rick Baker could do with moonlight reviving Lawrence Talbot? Come on, a desiccated corpse to werewolf transformation would be pure gold!

Secondly if they are planning to go down that route, why set the film in 1891? If you’re having Fred Abberline turn lycanthrope in a sequel, a more interesting premise would be to set this first movie BEFORE the Jack the Ripper murders.

But as I stated at the start of this review, The Wolf Man has come out pretty decent considering the production’s troubles. What we have here is an entertaining movie rather than a great film; in trading off drama for pace, it romps where it should lope. Or to put it another way, we have a comic book version of the story rather than the dark fairy tale it perhaps should have been.

However, although The Wolf Man has missed a cinematic bulls eye, it has at least hit the right target. I mean, look what happened when Universal have resurrected their famous monsters in the recent past - The Mummy series has upped stakes entirely from the horror genre and wandered onto Indiana Jones’ turf and as for Van Helsing … deary deary me, I never realised that pissing on graves counted as a homage these days.

The Wolf Man on the other hand, does respectfully tip its hat to the original in many ways – indeed for the Universal buff out there there’s a lot of nice little references to the original to spot. And neither is it as annoyingly and wilfully dumb as either of those other resurrections. Yes, it is a bit hokey but it is a fun watch. And lest we forget, many of the monster movies of years gone by, all those creature features that we all love so much, share the exactly the same kind of flaws. For all the unevenness in the story telling, it does the Wolf Man right and will no doubt win him a whole new generation of fans. Welcome back Larry!

THE PRISONER 2009 - FINAL REPORT

- Where am I?

- You are back in the Village

- Who are you?

- I am Number 2

- Who is Number 1?

- Wouldn’t know, I don’t follow the pop charts

- What do you want?

- We want … information!

- You won’t get it!

- Look, don’t piss me about: did you watch the damn thing or not!

Several months ago, I wrote up my impressions of the lengthy trailer/preview of The Prisoner remake which premiered at this year’s Comicon. And while I was very impressed by the quality of the production, I did have several misgivings – documented here – and, on the strength of that footage, predicted that what we would eventually see was a decent slice of scifi hokum but would probably fall short of being The Prisoner.

However, now having watched all six episodes of this all new Prisoner, I am more than happy to admit that I was wrong. So, to redress the balance, let’s have another looks at the issues that concerned me about the trailer and how things actually panned out in the complete series.

My first niggle was that it appeared that the fundamental dynamics of the story had been significantly dumbed down; that the story would be focused on an action-led escape from the Village rather than the more metaphorical struggle from freedom of the original. It appeared the espionage paranoia had been lost and Number 6 who’d be Bourne-ised – a man on a mission with unravelling his amnesia.

Therefore I was highly pleased to find that the new 6 comes from a shady spy background, this time from the world of corporate surveillance rather the ‘Great Game’ of international governments. Considering how intelligence agencies are more concerned with the threat from within these days, the new background for 6 is very fitting. And just as the original was deliberately vague on the specifics, the new background gives us the flavour of intrigue and rather setting out a clear cut scenario and boiling the mystery away.

And this is an often over looked point – in the original, McGoohan’s 6 is as enigmatic as his captors; we never discover what exactly the information the Village’s masters are so keen to prise from him. Likewise in the new version, Caviezel’s 6 is from an equally murky background; we know he is a surveillance expert and that he has stumbled upon something unsettling but the exact nature of what he does, who he works for and what he has found is shrouded in mystery.
But like the original, we discover enough about the kind of man he is to draw out sympathies. Again he is a character committed to his principles, a believer in honour and possessing a righteous moral indignation. From the trailer, it appeared that the new 6 had been significantly softened and made more of an ordinary guy, but in actual fact in the series he is as every bit as driven as the McGoohan version. Although Caviezel’s 6 is a warmer character there’s still all the anger, stubbornness and steely determination of his predecessor.

I had worried that Jim Caviezel would prove to be a little bland in the role and I did worry that he be out gunned by McKellen’s Number 2. Dramatically the original thrived on the battle of wills between McGoohan and all the myriad Number 2s and I did worry that the remake would miss the subtleness, the playing cat and mouse with either other, and reducing the relationship to a series of shouting matches. As it stands though, the remake captures all the intricacies of the original, with McKellen and Caviezel locked in a complex dance of bluff and counter bluff, each trying to discover each others weaknesses and press their advantage home. Quite simply, it’s marvellous to watch two actors locked in psychological battle.

And I have to say as the series progressed I became more and more impressed with Caviezel’s portrayal of Number 2. It’s a complex and many layered performance and if you are in doubt as to how impressed I was with his reading of the role, please note that I’m crediting him in this review with his proper surname rather than referring to him as ‘Jim Catweazle” as I did in my previous Prisoner piece! But I’ll leave the final word to Sir Ian himself – “You’ll see some of the finest performances from young actors gathered together. And the leading man, Jim Caviezel? Well, to die for.”

As for McKellen himself, well we always knew that Sir Ian would throw in a good turn. Let’s face it, an actor of McKellen’s calibre will is brilliant even when phoning in a performance or stranded in a ropey production. And from the preview footage it was clear that Sir Ian was more than up to challenge of appearing genial yet slightly sinister. However Bill Gallagher’s script gives Number 2 a great deal more to play with and McKellen rises to the challenge and gives the role all the dramatic and emotional weight he can muster.

There is some simply brilliant acting here, the likes of which we rarely see in genre productions. Even if nothing else about this production appeals, or if you feel that a Prisoner remake is an intolerable blasphemy, this series is worth checking out for the performances of the two leads alone.

However aside from 6 and 2, how does the new series’ treatment of the important third character – the Village itself - play out? Now I bitched at length about what we saw in the trailer and felt they’d dropped the ball big time. However in context of the full series the new Village works very well. To start with, in the preview footage, the landscape where the new Village is located in looked very like the wilds of Arizona or Nebraska. But as it is presented in the series proper, the desert setting is far more archetypal than what we saw in the trailer and once again this Village could be anywhere.

Furthermore I was concerned that the new Village would be an exercise in retro, effectively resetting the series in Pleasantville. As it is though, the reimagined Village does capture the same blend of nostalgia and modernity that made the Port Merion version so memorable. Like the original it is familiar yet strangely off kilter, with its peaked houses and its own distinct styles and fashions.

But there is a notable difference to the first incarnation: this Village is more of a real community, with people actually raising families here. Furthermore there are characters that have been born in the Village rather than shipped there by the powers that be. And although though the Village is less surreal in appearance than the original, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story that it should have a closer relation to the real world than the Mad Hatter’s tea party of the first incarnation.

However, a more realistic community does not mean life there is any less strange. There are still plenty of odd quirks in Village life. I did worry that a less surreal looking Village would equal a more mundane Village but thankfully that is not the case. Rover still lurks to hound those who stray too far but now there are also ghostly glass towers that sporadically appear. And there’s odd little details; off kilter minutia that I won’t spoil here. But one example I will mention is the fact that wraps seem to be the always the dish of the day in the new Village – now this has no bearing on the plot but it’s the kind of background detail that indicates to the viewer that although the Village appears like a normal small town, it’s actually somewhere deeply strange.

So then having done U-turns on every gripe I had about what was presented in the trailer footage, how does the series as a whole play out? And the short answer is very well indeed! As we’ve seen, the changes in this new version turned out to be far closer to the original than I initially expected. And better still, the cosmetic alterations mesh perfectly with the content of the narrative.

At first, the new style may seem a little choppy, but you soon adjust to the new rhythms, and each episode brings new twists and turns. Although this is a mini-series, the construction of the individual parts seeks recalls the episodic nature of the original. And from my sampling of the reviews out there, this seems to have annoyed and confused a lot of folk. However I thought that writer Bill Gallagher has pulled off a neat balancing act in creating instalments that could work as stand alone stories and yet still stack up as a satisfying story arc.

And the story does indeed satisfy. The acid test for any series that poses has mysteries as the backbone of their plots is how they pay off in the end, and the big problem is that too often you get to the end and are presented with a solution that inspires a deflating feeling of ‘oh, so that’s all it was’ rather than a genuine surprise/shock. Now the original Prisoner is the daddy of all these shows that feature a central puzzle, and as I was watching the episodes, I was very conscious of the fact that as good as the production was, if the ending bombed, the game was lost.

Now I must admit I did sort of guess where the ending was going, but in fairness if you’ve spent years reading twist-in-the tail stories you’ll probably be able to make a fair guess too. However working out ahead of time what was actually going on with the Village didn’t harm the end, as the way it unfolds doesn’t present you with a clean and neat explanation of everything that has happen. Rather the end blindsides you with answers that don’t diminish the story but opens the doors to a whole new set of questions. The answers presented tell you enough to be narratively satisfying but leave plenty of room for speculation, and I suspect some of the questions will prove to be enigmatic as the original, even with repeat viewings. And make no mistake, this is a show that when you get the end, you’ll want to start again at the beginning.

Generally it seems that the series has been met with somewhat mixed reviews. Partly this is down to ardent fans of the original being unable to get passed the changes I initially carped about, and partly because it doesn’t make sense. With the regards to former, I would say that it was more important that the new series creates its own iconography rather than slavishly ape the original, but more importantly it stays true to the philosophy of the show.

Although the new Prisoner takes its story in a different direction to the original, in terms of its underlying themes, it not only captures the same spirit but treats the subject matter with the same depth. It may be posing different questions about control, individual freedom and the human spirit but they are questions of equal weight and worth.

And as for the latter charges, would you really want a version of The Prisoner that makes sense! It’s a show that should leave you perplexed. After the final credits rolled and I sat scratching my head and was working my way through a myriad of questions and ideas about the series, I suddenly realised that against all the odds, what we have here is an honest-to-God new version of The Prisoner. Not a lame cash-in, not a Prisoner in name only, but an actual remake that works beautifully, honouring the original and yet presenting something new. It’s not just a rehash of the original but a show that works as compliment and companion to the McGoohan’s series – and that was something I really wasn’t expecting.

OFFICIAL! CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY!

Yes! It's really really true! Christmas has come early for cinema lovers everywhere!

In a terrific early present for film fans the world over, today Steven Spielberg has announced that his proposed remake of the Jimmy Stewart classic Harvey will no longer be going ahead. Not delayed, not on the back-burner but gone! Nixed! Cancelled!

Harvey is one of those classic movies that really just shouldn't be remade. Some films are just too iconic, and dare I say it, just too perfect to remake. And even though I'd have rather seen Spielberg in the director's chair than a host of lesser hands for a remake, his tendency to veer into the saccahrine would quite possibly end up replacing the magic and charm of the original with cloyingly sentimentality. Personally, I'd have picked Frank Darabont for the job, with Guillermo del Toro running a close second.

However the decison to not go ahead is the right one - and a wise one. If you are remaking a bona fide classic like Harvey, you either recreate the original or do something new with it. The latter obviously runs the risk of removing everything that makes the original work (see Neil Labute's The Wicker Man, and the former is a pointless exercise (Van Sant's Psycho.

So far, the reasons why Spielberg has decided to drop the Harvey remake have not come to light. But I reckon it went something like this....