Another Nightmare on Elm Street

In 2010, Samuel Bayer revised the classic slasher film Nightmare on Elm Street. This version is quite similar to the original from 1984, using many of the same characters and a similar story line. Fred Krueger is still portrayed as the killer coming to haunt teenagers in their dreams, except in the newer version he is a dead child rapist. The now teenagers in this movie all went to school together at a local preschool, but didn't remember doing so because their parents blocked those memories from their minds. Fred Krueger was the gardener at this preschool and all the children adored him. Parents soon started finding out that he wasn't the nice guy everyone saw, but was a pedophile and a rapist. When the police couldn't intervene, for lack of evidence, the parents took it upon themselves to trap Krueger in an abandoned building and burned it down. Now, over a decade later, Krueger comes back to seek revenge on the children who caused his death. If we look at this film in terms of Carol Clover's article, Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, we can distinctly see the formula for a slasher film. This movie includes a final girl, a terrible place, a weapon, and most certainly a suppressed psycho sexual killer.

The first thing I noticed, in this version, was the Final Girl. I thought I had her pegged from the beginning. Unlike the typical Final Girl, she was pretty, blonde, and purposely sexy. She started to see strange things unfolding pretty early on and even tried warning and protecting other characters. Her name was Kris, similar to the original Christina. The camera even took on her perspective from the start of the film and you assumed she was the main character, thus leaving her as the final girl. You see her dreams with Freddy Krueger, and then one night she can't escape him and he kills her in a horrific and overly sexual way. Before she dies, she becomes hysterical and starts writhing in bed as if she's having sex. She then floats up to the ceiling in a sort of climax and is then smashed off the walls in her bedroom. She's penetrated and sliced with knives and left in a pool of blood on her bed. Though she ended up not being the last girl, I still found it important to point out the way in which she died. We've discussed, in class, all the feminist qualities that I found present in this scene. First off, her hysteria is assumed to be feminine because it has long been thought of as a female tendency because women tend to be more emotional than men. Crying, screaming, and paranoia are all things Kris exhibited before she died. Then we have the presence of blood after her orgasmic death. If looking at Kris outside of her dream, she appears to be having sex with someone, but no one else is there. She is writhing and screaming in bed and then there's the climax with the explosion of blood. The blood during or after sex typically represents the loss of a woman's virginity. The amount of blood is taken to a whole new level when it completely covers her bed. She is literally left laying in a bed of her own blood.

Just like in the original, the actual Final Girl is Nancy. The only difference is we don't take her perspective until Kris dies, which is about halfway through the movie. Nancy exhibits all of the qualities of the Final Girl. She's not necessarily the "pretty one" or the "sexy one". She seems more reserved and even dark, and is often found drawing or sketching scarier images. Just like the others, she is experiencing Freddy through her dreams. With the help of her friend, Quentin, they end up putting all the pieces together and figuring out what happened and why Freddy is coming to get them in their dreams. In addition, she is the one who often sees her dead friends lingering both in reality and in her dreams, such as Kris in the bodybag. Towards the end of the film, the dream world and reality start overlapping from lack of sleep and also helps to foreshadow the final showdown between Nancy and Krueger. It is her mission to go to the old preschool where they all first met Freddy so she can defeat him. She remains smart, resourceful, and level headed and, by the end, ironically emerges as a badass killing machine. She stares death in the face, stabs Freddy, and eventually slices his throat and kills him. Unlike the original Nancy, who cries out for her father's help, this Nancy is the independent twenty-first century woman capable of saving herself. Even though Quentin provides some help, Nancy embodies the woman of today who can get the job done on her own. She ends up saving the guy instead of the knight in shining armor coming to her rescue.

During the dreams, the characters often end up in the Terrible Place. It appears to be like a boiler room which is hot, wet, and dark. Then out of nowhere, Freddy appears with his glove of razor blades. If we think about the image of a dark, wet tunnel, we think of a womb. But, with sharp, pointed objects coming after you, a vagina dentata would come to mind. With this image it definitely makes this Terrible Place monstrously feminized, which would explain why Jessie becomes so hysterical. If you put a man in a terribly, feminized place, he will feel his manhood being threatened. In the movie, Jessie loses his masculinity when he is pinned up against the wall with Krueger's razor blades staring him in the face, as if about to lose the only thing left that makes him a man. Something else that I noticed during the killings is that Freddy immediately killed the guys but took his time and seduced the girls. The first dreams we see the guys in, Freddy goes right for the kill---slitting throats or completely exploding through the abdomen. We see the girls, though, having multiple dreams and in each one Krueger luring them to him. He takes the guys right to the Terrible Place, whereas he takes the girls to their schools and even their bedrooms before the Terrible Place. The schools and bedrooms have a special significance to this film because Krueger lived in the basement of the preschool. His basement bedroom was where he took his children. The choice of these locations leads me to my next point.

The Suppressed Psycho Sexual Killer and the Weapons are the last things present in this slasher film. I liked the creative twist they put on Freddy, making him a child rapist rather than being just another random serial killer. It also upped the ante as to why the parents were so secretive. Freddy, by far, was a sick man for preying on innocent children at a preschool. Even during Nancy's last dream, there is infantilization, when Krueger puts her in his favorite dress from when she was a child. This coward of a man can't truly face these characters. Initially he preys on helpless children and then he preys on people in their dreams where they are completely powerless. Because of the twist on Freddy's character, Freddy is given two phalli. First his own and then his hand of knives. Both are extensions of the body used to penetrate these kids, but in vastly different ways. The first was used in a disgustingly, sexual way and the second was used as a murderous weapon. The second extension is not only one other phallus, but four more. If he couldn't get these children before, he's making sure he gets them now. Just when he has his last two victims left, Nancy picks up a huge razor blade and slits his throat. The Final Girl turns the tables and beats the Killer at his own game.

After using Carol Clover's article, Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, as a starting point, I was able to analyze the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street. This movie has many of the same qualities as the original---similar story line, similar characters, same killer, same weapon, same terrible place, and the same final girl. After looking at this version, I've seen many of the characteristics of a typical slasher film.The addition of Fred Krueger being a pedophile and rapist only added to the significance of him coming for teenagers inside their dreams.  In terms of gender, I have seen role reversals. The men of this film back down in a womb-like room only to be horrifically slain by a dangerous killer. But it's the Final Girl that comes out of her conservative shell to finish off this same monster. The final girl, the terrible place, the weapon, the killer, gender roles and reversals are all present in this creative remake of the classic slasher film, Nightmare on Elm Street.