Few horror movies have been as influential on pop culture as George Romero’s Dead films. Though he started with the small, but revolutionary 1968 film Night of the Living Dead it was his follow up Dawn of the Dead in 1978 that made a greater impact on the future of zombie entertainment. These movies established the undead flesh eating zombie on film (then mostly referred to as “ghouls” in the culture) and interpersonal conflict between the human characters we follow during the story. It was Dawn however that created the idea of urban/suburban survivors scrounging for supplies and trying to subsist in a zombie-ravaged post-apocalypse. Over the years Romero’s first three zombie films developed a rabid cult following and the first film was the subject of a near perfect remake (directed by special effects guru Tom Savini) in 1990.

In 2004 a remake of Dawn of the Dead was released, directed by former commercial director Zach Snyder in his first feature film. Immediately the cult based around Romero’s original work rebelled, but as audiences, even die hard horror audiences, began to see the film it became clear this wasn’t just a cash-grab remake but, like Savini’s, one very much in the spirit of the original film.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The original Dawn of the Dead took what worked from the tight and focused Night of the Living Dead and expanded it into a broader world. It trades the isolated farm house for a suburban shopping mall, though it maintains the idea of a small group banding together. There is a lot that works and some that doesn’t, but it still makes for an entertaining film.

The Good:

• Characters: With such a small cast you get to know and care about the main group of characters. Gaylen Ross and David Emge as the news broadcast couple are effective as neophytes who want to survive but don’t start out with everything it takes. Scott Reiniger is great as a SWAT member who actually cares about what he’s doing but realizes the cause is lost, and Ken Foree steals the show as Peter, another SWAT member who ends up as the defacto leader thanks to his cool head, forceful personality, and common sense. Even when annoying you genuinely like them and want them to survive the horror.
• Location: The suburbs shopping mall and how they use it is remarkably effective and part of what ended up being the most influential. It’s the first time we’ve seen regular people scavenging for survival the ruins of the old world.
• Effects: The zombie and gore effects are terrific. Some of the more gruesome zombies look truly gruesome. Given the age of the film, a lot of the practical effect really do hold up and as they are practical effects make a big impact on screen.

The Bad:

• Tangents: The film lacks the focused intensity of Night, which behaved as a short wild ride. It meanders from SWAT raids to redneck hunts. Sometimes the scenes feel unnecessary and given the length of the film you wonder how many of the extraneous scenes and montages need to be in there as they can kind of take you out of it.
• The Stupid: There is a LOT of stupid in this movie. From characters that behave in incredibly dumb ways to enhance artificial tension (by not being able to get their keys or forgetting a bag) to entire sequences that really take away from the mood. While zombie movies tend to agree other people can be more dangerous than zombies…rampaging bikers riding through the mall hitting zombies with pies is a tonal left turn. And to me is a massive black mark on an otherwise great narrative arc.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Surprisingly the remake actually follows the intro of the original Night of the Living Dead more than Dawn. A 10 minute build to set up the world and events is followed by a plot-punch in the face as the zombies take over. It takes what the original film did, stripped some of the goofier stuff, and added a bit of modernization to make a great progenitor for modern zombie horror.

The Good:

• Characters: AGAIN the characters are the strongest part of the film. The larger cast starts with principle character Ana played by Sara Polley, and later adds Ving Rhames, Mekhi Pfeiffer, Jake Weber, Lindy Booth, and even Matt Frewer in supporting roles. The cast is bigger but each character feels as though they have a purpose and you care about their outcomes, whether you want for them to make it or to be brutally shotgunned. My favorite is Michael Kelly as CJ. You initially hate his character but as the story progresses he ends up being one of the best. A testament to the writing and performance. Ken Foree does a cameo saying his famous quote from the original as does Tom Savini, appearing as a sheriff. And he is one cool mofo.

• Sound Design: There is an old saying that sound design is something that you don’t notice unless it goes wrong. The original made some odd sound and music queues, from western-style bullet ricochets to silly music stings. The remake is spot on in sound design and the ambiance is incredible because of it. The musical design is absolutely terrific, the Johnny Cash intro, the Richard Cheese montage, and the Jim Carroll outro are stand outs. Zombie cries are eerie and combat impact is brutal. Notably the zombie baby is pretty freaky…
• Narrative: Written by James Gunn now of, Guardians of the Galaxy fame, from Romero’s script, the story is, if anything, stronger than the original. We grow with characters and hope for their success. As their various trials and tribulations unfold we invest wholly and are gutted with each death. It’s hard to think of a modern zombie movie with so many effective individual story subplots, arcs, and resolutions. It might be missing some of the anti-consumerism of the original, but Romero’s handling of that subject was a bit ham-fisted to me anyway.

The Bad:

• Modern Zombies: I’m not a fan of modern zombies and this movie is one of the first that made the undead zombie stronger and faster than the living. Biologically alone this makes no sense at all and fast zombies just feel added to create a better sense of danger. I think the sheer number and ferocity of humans who want to eat you is bad enough without making them move like extras in a kung fu film.
• The Downer Ending: One of the best aspects of the original film is it has a positive ending. While things aren’t looking great overall, characters show resolve and conclude this chapter of their narrative with a little positivity.  The character we all invested in the most comes through in the end. Modern horror likes to let the bad guys win or end on a note in minor key and Dawn 2004 does this. While the ending is ambiguous you do discover the plan you’ve invested in is in at least some way a failure. It is a decent ending but I’d have liked to see something good for the characters we’ve been built up to love.

The Verdict:

Some thought has to be given to the impact of the original but enjoying a movie is a visceral feeling and I actually prefer the remake. While both movies have great benefits I feel Romero’s relatively guerrilla style made for a film that is less well made and the story didn’t quite have the effective edge of the remake. A lot of this hinges on the climax, as we I feel the remake benefited from having the zombies as the primary cause of the climax rather than a bunch of roving Hell’s Angels. As I said in my Nightmare post a remake can work if you give it to a good writer/director. Zach Snyder, unlike a lot of directors who came from TV and music videos (I’m looking at you Samuel Bayer) is very good at telling a story visually (if he can be a bit cliché and overdone) and Gunn delivered an excellent story as he has proved he is capable of doing since. Both make for good viewing, if you want to see where modern zombie horror originated (millennials who think Zombie-Personal Drama started with The Walking Dead are about to learn something) the original Dawn of the Dead will show you that and give you a great story. For an exciting film with a better developed sense of what works and what doesn’t the remake wins for me.

In 1984 horror maestro Wes Craven created the characters, world, and lore of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The original masterpiece introduced Robert Englund as the iconic monster Freddy Krueger, spawned seven franchise sequels, turned New Line Cinema into a profitable new industry player, and launched the mainstream careers of its director and several cast members.

In 2010 a remake was announced, which surprised few as nearly every horror franchise was in the process of being remade. It attempted to establish new lore, Jackie Earle Hailey took over as Krueger, and it endeavored to re-launch the franchise as “true horror” rather than the comedy-horror many of the original series sequels tended toward.

Having main-lined the entire franchise I have to declare the remake to be an abject failure in its execution that, despite some very strong performances from its new cast, embodies every ounce of flawed thinking in Hollywood’s remake culture. To compare them I’ve tried to break down some broad concepts to analyze what works when it works and what completely fails.

Premise:

Wes Craven’s premise is simple enough to be summed up quickly: Teenagers from the Elm Street neighborhood in the town of Springwood are having nightmares that turn out to be fatal. The cause is determined to be a monster named Freddy Krueger, a child killer in real life who was burned alive by angry parents and now his evil continues to be visited on their children.

The remake premise is similar but added elements that strangely made it less effective. In the remake kids are having bad dreams that also turn out to be fatal. The cause here is determined to be that they all went to the same pre-school where there was a gardener, Freddy Krueger, who seemed to be good to the kids but several children claimed he was molesting them. The parents track him down based on the kids’ accusations and burn him alive in a factory. After he dying Freddy hunts down the kids from the pre-school who accused him and kills them in their dreams.

What makes Craven’s premise so effective while the remake falls short? Craven made some conscious choices on how he built his story. The town of Springwood was designed to be “pure Americana” essentially any suburban town USA. Elm Street was chosen as a ubiquitous street name (as Freddy says in Freddy’s Dead “every town has an Elm Street”). It’s remarkably effective because it makes the audience of mostly teens feel like it could be their street, their town, and any one of them. Furthermore Craven chose dreams as the killing ground because everyone eventually falls asleep. As much as you fight it you will sleep, you will dream, when you dream he’ll get you. Craven’s entire premise was universal and broad. It could be any of us.

The remake surprisingly narrowed its field of victims. It isn’t generic street and town USA, it’s a specific school and within that school a specific population. We see a photograph of the kids who are being killed in their dreams displaying who the victims are and will be. Since we all didn’t go to Badham Pre-School while Fred Krueger was there, this means the audience’s “fear” is based wholly on their attachment to the potential victims and they feel no subconscious threat to themselves. It puts a lot of pressure on the narrative’s characters…which is what is covered next.

Characters:

Watching Craven’s Nightmare especially in the wake of Friday 13^th and Halloween, it has a surprisingly low body count. Three kids and seemingly one parent. BUT, because of the way Wes Craven uses his characters we feel every death. We first meet Tina, a pretty blonde girl from a troubled home. Less than 5 minutes in we meet Nancy, her straight laced boyfriend Glen, and Tina’s roguish boyfriend Rod. These three characters are all introduced in one scene, relationships established through visual cues during plot-based dialogue revealing all the characters are having similar bad dreams. When, in a nod to Psycho, Tina dies in the first 15 minutes (still one of the most brutal deaths I can think of in a horror movie) we then follow Nancy as she shows resolve, courage, creativity, and self-sacrifice in fighting to keep herself and her friends alive; against parents who don’t believe her; and Freddy who haunts her dreams. As other characters die we feel their deaths. We’ve spent so much time with them, experiencing their development and their world we fear for them. When Nancy cries for Glen we’re there with her. When she faces Freddy we cheer for her. As for Freddy, what can be said? Robert Englund created what is probably the most famous and iconic modern slasher villain. Used sparingly by Craven, always in shadow or obscured, Freddy hunts his victims, stalks them, teases them…Freddy enjoys his work. We love his charisma as a villain but dread his sadism and applaud Nancy’s ultimate victory over him.

The remake attempted to follow many of the same concepts but made several serious mistakes. Kris, a character reminiscent of Tina, is the one we follow and invest in at first but for one third of the film, instead of ten minutes. When she dies thirty minutes in the audience now must re-invest in Nancy, with whom we’ve spent meager time as she’s had to split so much screen time with Kris. We meet Nancy in the opening scene but know little about her character since we’ve spent so much time establishing the original lead. Based on their interactions we don’t even know the relationship between Kris and Nancy. She works at the diner. Has had some bad dreams. She’s an artist. We know the kinds of things that might appear in an obit, but nothing about her personally. And with an hour to resolve the story we also have to establish why we need to care about her struggle. We also have Quentin (who through several lines of dialogue and a few scenes is established as having feelings for Nancy, these filmmakers really need to learn how to tell a story visually…) who we also meet early but then have to establish as well over the film’s last 45 minutes to an hour. Then we have Freddy. He’s darker and “scarier” supposedly but in making him more menacing they’ve sucked all his personality away. Jackie Earle Hailey does a phenomenal job with the character he has, but he lacks the foreplay of Englund’s Freddy. He doesn’t toy with you with the same glee or mind-bend your reality like Craven’s Freddy. They made him far closer to the characters Craven and Englund actively tried to avoid. By breaking up the story amongst so many “leads” Kris, Nancy, Quentin, Freddy, we never fully establish whose story we’re telling which is the final point.

Whose Story is this?

Film historian Michael Jeck is fond of asking “who are we in this movie?” It’s a very effective way to analyze a story and see if a narrative works. So who are we in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street? It’s easy. We are Nancy. It is her story. Even introduced after Tina, we understand Tina relies on her for courage and strength. Glen comes to her for leadership. Rod comes to her for trust. Nancy’s parents are troubled; her mom starts out in denial then drinks heavily once her admission of her role in creating Krueger. Her father is protective but distant and also has to wrestle with his role in murdering Freddy. So we identify with, follow, and admire Nancy’s narrative. As for Freddy? He’s a dark menace. His story is told so quickly and so late we never bother to ask how or why. What he can do and who he is has been established through earlier action so he’s a mysterious boogeyman and his backstory provides just enough information to make us hate as well as fear him.

Who are we in the remake? I actually don’t know and this is a major, major flaw in its narrative and design. First we’re Kris, searching for facts about her friend Dean’s killer. Then we’re split between Nancy and Quentin. Then we are told in depth Freddy’s backstory via flashback and narrative. So we as the audience are Kris, Nancy-Quentin, AND Freddy (the villain stripped of his all mystery) all at once. The result is a mess of a story with NO anchors for the audience. Its protagonists seeing things, describing the things they just saw or did, and repeating the premise concepts endlessly. Dare I say, the filmmakers had the seed of a courageous new direction and balked at the last minute. I remember seeing this film and theaters and thinking, “wow what if Freddy is innocent?” It would turn it into Freddy’s story as the character you identify with, the one taking his vengeance on the kids who falsely accused him and the parents who brutally murdered him. But when we reveal the kids were telling the truth, that he was a despicable molester…we definitely cannot identify with his story, so we’re yo-yoed back into Nancy and Quentin, whose characters lack so much conviction and mettle we don’t really want to be them either. Would I have liked an innocent Freddy? I’m not a purist so maybe/maybe not it would have depended on the execution, but it would have at least justified the remake…

Why Remake?

Why even do a remake of an iconic film? It’s a valid question considering how much of the industry relies on them. Modern remakes typically seem to be done to make money off the name, which is fine especially when given to writers and directors who realize what made the original successful and incorporate this into their own version. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 this was its greatest failure. It doesn’t have any idea why Craven’s film was successful and scary. It was about characters we identify with and care about fighting a monster from which there is no escape. It’s told with deft visual style, frame-filling narrative, iconic scenes, and uses every single second of its 90 minute running time.

The remake only seems to focus on a killer in dreams and telling his back story. It establishes no characters we believe in, no iconic scenes save for those from the original gruesomely updated with CGI or severely hobbled by nonsensical construction (a nightmare in the bath ends up in the snow?!), and muddles the villain’s backstory with over-exposition and ambiguous motivation for his victims to remember him. It took a tight, focused narrative and turned it into a chaotic, careless monstrosity. If nothing else it helps prove why Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street will stand as the magnum opus from one of the masters of horror and the 2010 remake a mere shadow of its effectiveness. Will the 2010 version ever achieve the same level of success and appreciation as Craven’s? Only in its dreams…