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.

A film adaptation of the classic video game seemed pretty straightforward on paper: a bunch of freaks from all around the world get together and fight in the streets of wherever. All the film had to do was to find lookalikes and a reason for all the characters to get together. Instead, we got Van Damme... The casting of the colourful bunch is more miss than hit with some looking nothing like who they're based on (Ken, Blanca, Guile), some barely existing (Dhalsim, Vega) and others looking the part but so Americanized they might as well all be called John Smith. Raul Julia is hammier than he's ever been and looks ridiculous but delivers some of the silliest lines ever with style and gusto. Van Damme is as grating as ever and his childish, airhead Guile is impossible to relate to or take seriously for a second. Especially with Kylie "Spinning Around" Minogue as his sidekick. This is about as misguided as a game-to-film adaptation can get and Mortal Ko