TheRetroCritic

Here's one horror remake I was actually looking forward to. I had heard some negative feedback but also some good things about it so as far as I was concerned it didn't look too bad in the trailer so there was a chance that it might actually be a decent remake. Nope. There was something about the original A Nightmare On Elm Street that made it an easy film to watch and re-watch. It didn't take itself too seriously, its villain was a prankster with a REALLY dark sense of humour, Freddy's dream kills were creative and pretty surreal to the point where you genuinely didn't know what was coming next and you got to see a Johnny Depp in serious trouble. It was a silly flick but it was a lot of fun and introduced us to one of cinema's most iconic killers. Here we have a slick, Michael Bay-produced remake starring the always reliable Jackie Earle Haley ( Watchmen , Dark Shadows ) as Freddy Krueger, a part which had been played for decades by Robert Englund.

The original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a film I expected a lot from. Overhyped upon its release, it was really being pushed as THE next must-see thriller series. Bourne was done, Bond and Ethan Hunt were on their gap years: this was the sexy European fix we needed. What we got was a cross between a TV movie-style investigation, a classic whodunit and a sexy, modern, kickass thriller. It hardly blew me away but it worked and although I was no fan I acknowledged it was well made and was a good example of the genre. Now David Fincher is in as director for the remake and the likes of Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer and Stellan Skarsgard make up the cool US cast. The result? It's the same. Well, more or less the same. You've got a swanky Placebo-style music video to get you started as a kind of dark, modern, gooey Bond opening title sequence complete with fire, Led Zepellin AND hornets. Not sure how useful that really was but I enjoyed it: it was