Behind The Screen 1: My Nightmare

Some people have noted, and rightfully so, that the top of this page reads “The ramblings of student screenwriter Dan Doolan”. Those people have also noted, and also correctly, that this is slightly misleading since I rarely talk about television or screenwriting in this Blog.
If I’m honest, this was originally a conscious decision on my part.
When I first started this site in September I really didn’t expect that anyone other than my friends would read it. And while I admit that’s still mostly the case, I am starting to acquire readers from elsewhere on the magical thing sometimes known as the Internet. More specifically, Google. In fact, it’s these very people who have pointed out the misleading nature of the headline at the top of this page.

But at first with only my friends reading, I felt I had better not alienate them with talk of things they are simply not interested in. So I kept the blog neutral so it is easy access for everyone. But more recently I have felt increasingly that I really need to get off the fence and start discussing a specific subject. Screenwriting, Television and Movies being the obvious answer to the question of which topic.
I considered addressing this by starting a second blog called Behind the Screen.
But lets be realistic here, that would never work, I barely manage to update this one once a decade, how in the world would I manage a second? That and behindthescreen.com has already been taken.

Oh… and it sounds like a lot of work. And as I have already established I am a lazy procrastinator by nature.

So, this is my lazy mans solution, along with the Bloglette series I’m running, I am now going to post blog’s titled “Behind the Screen” that discuss all things TV and Screenwriting I want to talk about. That way the people who don’t care for things of a television-y nature can simply stick their fingers in their ears, hum a few bars of their favourite song and ignore it completely. Unless of course they don’t like music either, but if that’s the case they wouldn’t like my blog either way, bloody robots.

So let’s get to it. This week I’m only going to discuss one thing since I’ve wasted so many words introducing the damn thing.
This week I want to discuss horror film remakes and how concerned I was to discover that they are doing a remake of one of my favourite horror movie of all time… “Nightmare On Elm Street”.

Now, before I start ranting I want to make something clear. I am not against remakes. A lot of my favourite movies simply don’t hold up anymore due to the poor special effects being very noticeable and taking me out of the story every five minutes. I am 100% behind the idea of remaking these movies, cleaning up the visuals and special effects can potentially make something I love even better. And lets be honest, "Nightmare" certainly falls into that category. Three or four times over in fact… and yes, specifically I’m thinking of the scene when the phone turns into Freddie’s mouth and licks Nancy’s face.

So you are probably wondering what my problem is. If I think it’s a good idea to recreate the imagery what’s the problem? Well I’ll tell you…

These remakes, while being superior to the originals in terms of technical filmmaking and visual effects tend to be inferior to the originals in story. It’s almost as if the writers are so busy thinking up cool visuals and things they couldn’t do in the original that they forget what made the first one so great. THE STORY!
With special effects being what they were twenty plus years ago, filmmakers were forced to rely more on truly scary concepts and story’s to frighten viewers. Sure they crafted scary imagery as well, but never at the expense of a story.

Lets look at a couple of examples of horror movie remakes that recrafted the imagery but completely missed the point of the original. Forgetting what made it scary in the first place.

Firstly, I want to talk about Rob Zombies “Halloween”.

John Carpenters “Halloween” (Another one of my all time favourites) was scary because of the concept of a child going on a murderous rampage and killing his entire family completely unprovoked.
The idea that someone could just snap like that at anytime with no reason, especially someone as innocent as a child, was chilling to say the least. When I first saw that film when I was about 11, I immediately tried to put a lock on my 8 year old sisters bedroom door. I mean, by the originals logic, absolutely anyone could turn killer in a split second and that idea scared the crap out of me and made the rest of the film terrifying.

But Rob Zombie's film, while technically being very well crafted, completely missed that point. They tried to tell a part of the story we hadn’t seen in the original by explaining what bastards Michael Myers family were. They tried to explain his actions and give a reason to explain his mental state. In this version his mother was a stripper and his step-dad a rather violent drunk and they all treated him like garbage. But for me it took something very important away from the original. Of course someone could do something that terrible if provoked, but that’s not scary since I don’t plan to ever treat anyone like that. By this films logic my little sister couldn’t turn slasher overnight and that’s not nearly as scary an idea. Not to mention that the idea of some people who deserve it getting slaughtered by a child isn’t nearly as haunting as it was when they didn’t.

My second example will be the recent remake of Friday the 13th.
Which while being technically a brutal and entertaining gore fest, it followed in Halloweens footsteps and missed the point of the original. Well, in this case, not the original. Since the original didn’t even have Jason Voorhees in it. But I’m talking about the sequels, which this remake seems to be a remake of. Confused? Yeah, me to.

So in the original movies what made Jason such a scary character was how bloody unstoppable he was. He was stabbed through the shoulder with a machete, had an axe driven through his head and at one point was even tied to a big boulder and drown at the bottom of a lake. But no matter what you did he would just keep coming back and coming back until he killed you. This, for me at least, was what made the Friday the 13th films so scary. But, what I have failed to note here is that in the original movies they established this over multiple films. Having the heroes seeming kill him at the end and bringing him back at the beginning of each movie, slowly building fear in the audience of this unstoppable creature.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, the new Friday the 13th film DOES bring him back at the end after he is thought to be dead in a fairly definite way.
But while that is true, people are forgetting that this particular remake is actually the first four films combined into one. It tells compressed versions of the first couple of movies with the main bulk of the movie retelling the story of the fourth. So why in the world did they not show Jason being killed in the compressed versions of the first few movies? Without building up the unstoppable aspect of this monster it’s just another slasher flick and nowhere near as scary as the original fourth Friday the 13th movie.
What is the point of telling these compressed versions of the early films if not to set up how damn unstoppable Jason is?

And you can’t defend it by claiming that maybe they are approaching it like the original and building up that aspect of Jason over multiple films because if that were the case they wouldn’t of compressed so many stories into one film in the first place.
Although credit where credit is due, I was absolutely amazed at how seamlessly they combined so many films. It didn’t feel clunky or out of place at all… the only problem is that they didn’t take that opportunity to make Jason as scary as he was by the fourth movie.

So with all that in mind, I think you can understand my concern at the concept of a Nightmare On Elm Street remake.

I'm concerned about what changes they will make...

I can just see it now.
They are going to change the backstory so Freddie Krueger was originally a gardener who got caught in a bush fire and now arbitrarily haunts children in their dreams. Or maybe instead of getting them in their sleep, maybe they will rework Freddie for the modern age and have him get kids through Facebook or via their xbox’s.

I know how ridiculous it is for me to judge this movie before I have seen so much as a trailer. I know how ridiculous it is to assume that the story will be changed at this point. I realise that for all I know they have hired a competent writer who will handle the character and story with as much care as the updating of the images. It’s not unheard of, for example the remake of the Amityville Horror was incredible.

But despite that, I’m finding it hard to see this as a good thing.
I can’t help but shake the concern I have for this film falling into the same traps other remakes have…

Anyway, thanks for reading.

-- Dan