You already know this story. And if you don’t, it’s not that hard to explain. A group of teens is being stalked in their nightmares by a man in a festively-striped sweater, a man who is horribly burned and has knives on his fingers. Whatever he does to them in their dreams happens to them in real life. They have to figure out that it’s happening to them in the first place, and they have to figure out why, and they have to figure out how to stop it, or they will all die. Also, they can’t go to sleep, which makes clarity of thought a little tricky. Like I said, you know this story.[1]

A Nightmare on Elm Street has been remade, is the upshot of all this reminiscing. Which leaves only one particularly relevant question: was it remade well? And the answer is, it’s good. It took me a while to get over Robert Englund’s absence from the movie, but I’m pretty sure that was inevitable. What matters is, I got over it. And what’s left behind is… well, it was not a revelatory masterpiece like Rob Zombie’s Halloween, but neither was it a disaster like his Halloween II, and neither still was it lukewarm retread like Michael Bay’s Friday the 13th. It was, you know, good. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the original that I cannot remember if it was made straight and all the campy theatrics came later in the series, or if they were always like that. But I can say for sure that this version was neither campy, nor theatrical. Seeing it without knowing the backstory, it would have been more than a little creepy, and even knowing what I knew, the tension between exhaustion, fear, and a horribly revealed past was downright compelling.

If you’ve never seen a Nightmare movie, this would be a fine start. And if you enjoyed the series, I’m pretty sure you’ll be as happy with the remake as I was.

[1] The first few books of the Wheel of Time, amirite? *fingerguns*