Brace positions, please, for the 21st-century recurrence of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's antique tale of the snickering burns victim who kills you in your sleep. Jackie Earle Haley is the new Freddy Krueger, less camp and more scary than the Robert Englund version, as he slices and dices his way through a cast of exhausted all-Americans. Does it matter that the plot is little more than a cynical, machine-tooled retread of the 1984 original? Debut director Samuel Bayer was not hired to dismantle the franchise but to shoot it afresh. He gives us a film in which the teens are screaming and the blood is flowing; a steel-jawed little man-trap tucked just beneath the duvet. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
Film review: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Xan Brooks
Twenty-five years on, the legendary teen slasher gets a modern makeover for a whole new generation – and does a pretty decent job, writes Xan Brooks
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Xan Brooks
Xan Brooks is a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in cinema
Xan Brooks
The GuardianTramp
