I don't know if I'm crazy, masochistic, or just stupid, but somehow I've managed to see two horror remakes so far this year. One of them was pretty painful to watch. The other was exactly what I had hoped for (Well, almost). One was A Nightmare On Elm Street. The other was Piranah 3-D. I'll give you 5 seconds to guess which one I actually enjoyed.
Piranah 3-D was a fun ride, and really nothing more. But it didn't need to be. It needed to be cheesy C.G.I. fish, chomping on some nubile young co-eds, and it was. I didn't expect, or want, a deeply philosophical examination of human nature as told through the persepective of optimistic young adults contemplating morality as they're running from an unstoppable force of unrelentingly aggressive animals. I wanted to see some big toothed fish rip some people apart. And that's what I saw. Lots of it. And in 3-D! Well, kinda...
I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to technology. I believe my cell phone is for making phone calls. I still play my 1989 Nintendo Entertainment System more than I do any other newer system. I've held a Wii controller for around 2 hours cummulatively. And for a few of those minutes, I actually figured out how to move the cursor around on the screen. I have the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat blood code memorized (All together now: A, B, A, C, A, B, B). I didn't discover podcasts until sometime last year.
What I'm getting at is, when I hear the word 3-D, I still expect red and green glasses with things jumping off the screen. The synapses in my brain fail to understand that "Real 3-D" is different. So when I saw the preview for Piranah 3-D, I thought, "Cheesy C.G.I. fish, random nubile co-ed limbs, and fish guts jumping off the screen, right at me?! Yes, please!" But, this is Avatar 3-D; immersive, atmospheric... In other words, no flying fish guts. Thatt's my only complaint. A part of me wanted the old school 3-D of yore with this one. I still think that type of 3-D was practically made for horror movies. The appeal of a horror movie is to examine the macabre, the dark side of our minds, via blood 'n' guts. If 2-D blood 'n' guts is fun, 3-D blood 'n' guts is even more fun. And afterall, Piranah 3-D is a remake of the 1978 original. A somewhat loose remake that doesn't try to ape everything that the original presented. Piranah 3-D takes the basic premise of the original, amps up the fun parts (hence, more nubile young co-eds, more blood, goofy amounts of gore), and takes pride in the fact that it's a throwback to the fun days of horror.
Which brings me to the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake, and why that one didn't work for me. I am a fan of the Nightmare series; even the admittedly bad ones. But I don't worship at the altar of Robert Englund. He's great as Freddy, but I'm more of a Friday the 13th guy. So when they announced that Fred Kreuger would be played by someone else, I wasn't livid like many fans. I like Jackie Earl Haley, in fact. And he was good, the few minutes he was actually on screen.
He brought something new to the character. I liked his nervous hand twitch thing. I liked that he was less flashy; less of a showman. I like that they tried to make him look more like an actual burn victim... although the end result reminded me of Voldemort. I liked the few minutes of pre-burn victim Freddy backstory. I liked the drug store scene as well.
But I didn't like much else. In my opinion, the 80's and 90's Nightmares worked because the nubile co-eds were average American teens. You knew people like them. They actually passed for high schoolers. You cared that they were getting torn apart and terrorized. They weren't unrealistically beautiful, or one dimensional stereotypes (for the most part), and most of them actually stood somewhat of a chance against Freddy. Conversely, the remake is filled with unrealistically beautiful girls trying to pass for high schoolers. The ones that aren't abnormally attractive are stereotypically artsy, dark and brooding.
The original worked, because it was subtle and creepy. The budget called for practical improvisation. What they couldn't do with flashy technology, they made up for with atmosphere. It didn't rely on C.G.I. and sonic boom surround sound jump scares. Freddy was calculating. He messed with their heads and discovered their fears, instead of popping up now and then and whispering "Boo!" or in this case, "Why are you screaming? I haven't even cut you yet."
I will admit, I made a mistake before going to see the Nightmare remake. I watched the original minutes before. They re-created so many of the original, iconic scenes that it was really hard to keep from comparing the two. And they recreated them thinking that bigger = better. So the creepy slow drag across the ceiling turned into a blurry, incoherent scene that would have fit in The Bourne Identity. The subtle head through the wall scene turned into a ridiculously over the top C.G.I. mess. It had the subtlety of a jack hammer root canal. Creepy was replaced with loud and fast. Not only did it take every scene from the original and "modernize" then, it ripped off movies that were freshly out of the theater. **Cough Paranormal Activity Cough**
It's a real shame, because they could have really done something different. You have a killer who haunts his victims' dreams. The setting possibilities are endless. A darker, creepier Freddy? Have him explore their fears and really use it against them. Drive them insane until they off themselves. Or, put them in Freddy's mind, so they can see and feel his madness, and fear him even more. That was a further frustration for me; the remake touched upon a possibly interesting twist in the Fred Kreuger legend, but didn't have the balls to follow through with it. Why bring the idea up if you're just going to throw it away seconds later?
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) was a dreary reminder of what happens when a director takes a horror movie too seriously. Piranah 3-D was a reminder that it's ok to have fun with horror movies.
Here's the trailer for Piranah 3D: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW5_4gZ0Jn4
And the one for A Nightmare On Elm Street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEQnoIq4UFY
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