Heather Langenkamp Explains Why She Can’t Watch the Nightmare on Elm Street Remake
Jonathan Barkan
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The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise will always be near and dear to my heart. My first horror memory is of Freddy bursting through Joey’s waterbed and sealing him within, letting his mother find his drowned body. Once that scene ended, my mother took the remote away and changed the channel, saying that I’m not allowed to watch such films. Being six years old, I was perfectly fine with that punishment as I had nightmares for weeks!
Interestingly, my first real dive into the A Nightmare on Elm Street series began not at the beginning but at the end, with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. That was the first film I watched in its entirety, and I absolutely loved it. Because of that experience, I sought out the other films and watched them in order, loving the first one, questioning the second, adoring the third, and then feeling blasé about the fourth and fifth entries. As for the sixth, I’m that rare person who finds it very entertaining, and I’ll happily watch it any day of the week.
But one entry that I cannot stand is the 2010 remake, which starred Jackie Earle Haley in the role of Freddy Krueger. Now, I honestly didn’t have a problem with his performance. In fact, I think he nailed it considering the vibe that the film was going for. The problem with the film was the horrible script, the terrible makeup, and the fact that they dropped what could’ve been the most interesting twist to the Freddy mythos possible: What if he was innocent?
They posited that scenario, and I found it to be one of the most exciting prospects in a long time! What a refreshing twist! What a brilliant way to inject something fresh into the series! Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, which made the remake all the more frustrating and disappointing.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who has issues with the remake. In a new interview with TooFab, Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy in the first and third films and herself/Nancy in the seventh, admits that she’s never seen the remake. However, her reason for this is because she has so many memories attached to Craven’s material that she doesn’t want to compromise them. For her, there is only one Freddy, and that’s Robert Englund.
You can watch the interview below to hear for yourself her thoughts on the matter!
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