A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET — SHOCKTOBER!

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ColeSmithey.comMore contemplative and thematically muscular than Wes Craven's 1984 original slasher flick, Samuel Bayer's updated version has a quieter surreal edge rooted more in suspense than in the former film's regular bloodletting.

That's not to say plenty of quarts of the red liquid don't flow freely from a group of teens who had the misfortune to have been molested by Freddie Kruger when he worked as a nursery school janitor a dozen years earlier.

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Jackie Earle Haley breathes fearsome life into the horribly disfigured monster that lives in the dream-lives of his victims.

Screen Shot 2022-06-26 at 11.10.02 PM

The movie has a sustained sense of morbid dread that's abetted by the narrative's adult characters who conspire against the truth of their own complicity in their children's sustained terror.

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Subtle nods to films like "Psycho," "The Exorcist," and "The Shining" work to create a grotesque universe of the sleep deprived where nightmares nestle like Russian Dolls. Where Craven's film was campy, Bayer's movie is just plain dark.

Rated R. 95 mins. 

3 Stars Screen Shot 2023-10-05 at 12.33.50 PM

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