Thomas Dekker, who will see his directorial debut Jack Goes Home released this Friday, recently opened up about the 2010 remake to Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street.
In a fresh interview, Dekker is asked about his thoughts on the film, from a director’s perspective, and while the actor-turned-filmmaker does give props to his co-stars, he acknowledges that the film catered to the lowest common denominator.
Here’s the bit from ScreenGeek:
It’s a tricky one to talk about. I would say it was an honor to be a part of it. I think the cast as we know, we had two, now one-time Oscar nominee and another two-time Oscar nominee who’s still a very good friend of mine, Rooney Mara, and I think the issue at hand with that movie can’t really be thrown at the director because the director was basically a gun for hire to make it look good, and he did that. It looked great. But it’s basically like most good films tell a story, that film was to sell a tuxedo. It’s a sales movie. “It’s okay, we got this idea we’re going to take and we’re going to make money off it, so let’s just do that”. Even though the intentions of the artistic forces behind it were “Okay, we’re going to open up the mythology of Freddy Kruger, we’re going to make him darker and actually explore the idea of child sexual abuse” and those are all the things that interested me. Of course at the end of the day when you have to put it in 1,000 theaters or more, you have to shy away from those things and just make it a sell-able entity. So I think you can’t really start judging the leaves of a tree if the seed is fucked.
He continued:
And that’s that situation. The unfortunate part is if it had been an independent film, sort of inspired by ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, I think it could have been something really special, but in order to afford that brand, then you have to cater to the lowest common denominator, and that’s what happens with these remakes. You’re not allowed the privilege of originality if you’re not coming up with an original idea. (pause) I don’t know, that was a lot of words I just threw at you, I apologize.
I was really close to the production from its inception through release and there’s a lot of interesting stuff behind-the-scenes. One thing that always nagged at me was just how good the Wesley Strick/Eric Heisserer screenplay was, and how scenes were butchered by the time they made it onscreen (the introduction of micronap was genius and provided an unprecedented amount of suspense during the final act). Samuel Bayer, director of some of the biggest music videos ever, seemed out of date to be jumping into a director’s chair, and I think the remake looked less stylish than it did dated. It’s clear that everything begins with some heart, but as Dekker mentions, studio filmmaking is a business and they have to hit big numbers to cover the cost of not only the film, but marketing. A Nightmare On Elm Street was insanely expensive (the reported budget is $35 million but I’ve heard it hit $60m), and it’s $115m worldwide take only netted Warner Bros./New Line $60m. If the costs I’ve heard were accurate, adding in the marketing costs make this remake a massive failure, which is probably why they’re working to re-remake it once again. What’s ironic is that they thought they were tailor-making a box office winner, but somehow failed to connect with general audience.
A year earlier the Friday the 13th had similar issues, dropping a whopping 80% at the box office in its second week of release. Now that both franchises have had time to breathe, who knows what lessons the studio learned from the aforementioned remakes, and if the future is going to be bright for both Freddy and Jason. Still, hearing inside stories like the one by Dekker is crushing to this horror fan who wishes there was a bridge between creativity and selling to the masses.