A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 2010 American supernatural slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer, and written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer. The film stars 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 a fictitious town in Ohio and centers around 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, 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 Freddy, 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. Freddy's physical appearance was changed with the use of computer-generated imagery 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 in the previous eight films, voiced his support of the remake and the casting of Haley in the role of Freddy.

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. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, who criticized its writing, acting, and the film's lack of depth and empathetic characters, but praised Bayer's direction and faithfulness to the 1984 film. Despite this, it grossed over $63 million at the domestic box office and over $117 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the franchise.

Plot

While at the Springwood Diner, Dean Russell falls asleep at the table and meets a severely burned man in seared clothes 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 look on. At Dean's funeral, Kris sees a photograph of her and Dean as children but cannot recall knowing Dean before high school. Kris begins to have nightmares about the burned man and then refuses to go to sleep for fear that she will die like Dean. Jesse Braun, Kris' ex-boyfriend, shows up to keep her company while she sleeps, but Kris meets the burned man in her dreams and is murdered. Covered in Kris' blood, Jesse runs to Nancy's house and learns that Nancy has been having nightmares about the same man — Freddy Krueger.

Jesse is arrested by the police under suspicion of murdering Kris and is killed by Krueger when he falls asleep 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 Nancy and Quentin about Krueger, the preschool's groundskeeper who was accused of molesting the children, including Nancy. Gwen explains that Nancy was his favorite and that she came home one day and told her mother about the things Krueger did to her in a secret location. Gwen alerted the other parents, including Quentin's father Alan, but she tells the teenagers that Krueger escaped before he was arrested. Refusing to believe her mother's story, Nancy attempts to track down the remaining kids from the school but discovers that all of them have been killed. Following Jesse's death, only she and Quentin are left. Meanwhile, Quentin falls asleep during his swim practice and sees a flashback to the parents, led by Alan, tracking Krueger down and burning him alive.

As a result of their insomnia, Nancy and Quentin have sporadic microsleeps and become hypnagogic, causing them to dream and hallucinate randomly. To try to stop Krueger, they decide to go to the preschool to learn what they can. On the way, Nancy is attacked by Krueger when she hallucinates, during which she pulls a piece of Krueger's sweater out of the dream world into reality. Quentin takes Nancy to the hospital, where he steals adrenaline to help them stay awake. Nancy and Quentin eventually make it to the preschool and uncover Krueger's hidden room to find proof of his crimes; they realize that Krueger, now a vengeful ghost, wants revenge on them for disclosing his abuse. Nancy decides to pull Krueger out of the dream world and kill him in the real world. Quentin tries to stay awake long enough to pull Nancy out of her dream when she grabs Krueger, but he falls asleep and is attacked.

Krueger goes after Nancy and explains that he deliberately left her for last so that she would be comatose. Quentin awakens and uses the adrenaline to wake Nancy, who then pulls Krueger into reality. They fight and Nancy uses a broken paper cutter blade to kill him before she torches the room with Krueger's body inside. She and Quentin escape and are rescued by the police officers and firefighters, who are unable to find Krueger's remains. After Nancy and her mother return home from the hospital, Krueger suddenly appears in the mirror's reflection. While Nancy screams, Krueger kills Nancy's mother before pulling her body through a mirror and disappearing.