Just one year apart, New Line Cinema and Platinum Dunes brought Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger back to the big screen with the one-two punch of Friday the 13th in 2009 and A Nightmare on Elm Street in 2010, and neither icon has been seen or heard from since. Sadly, both remakes failed to launch the new franchises they were intended to.
While we wait for the two icons to return once more, we’ve learned today that Samuel Bayer’s A Nightmare on Elm Street is now streaming on Netflix. The film joins Marcus Nispel’s remake of Friday the 13th on the streaming service. Because you can’t have Freddy without Jason.
The Elm Street remake out-grossed the Friday remake at the box office, but that’s really the only metric that would allow anyone to consider Freddy’s return more successful than Jason’s. While the Friday the 13th remake is a pretty damn good Friday the 13th movie, playing out like a new take on the first three movies in the original series, Elm Street is little more than a poor man’s version of Wes Craven’s original classic. Mind you, it’s home to some pretty good ideas – the micro-naps and Freddy’s potential innocence, for starters – but Elm Street 2010 is easily the worst of the big slasher franchise remakes that were released around that time, with a solid performance from Jackie Earle Haley buried under some truly awful makeup.
I’ve revisited the film a couple times in recent years in the hopes that I’ll realize it’s better than I remembered – I am, after all, a HUGE fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise – but the reality is it’s just not a movie you’ll ever find me championing. As for the Friday the 13th remake, that’s one I’ve revisited several times purely because I have a lot of fun with it.
In any event. They’re both streaming on Netflix right now. Enjoy.
