Perhaps because merely murdering children is now less shocking and unforgivable than merely molesting them, the living Freddy is no longer a child-killer, though the parental lynch mob that burned him and turned him into what he has now become, remains the same. The difference being that the pursuit and killing of Krueger is now depicted in straight-forward nightmare flashbacks ; somehow, the event was far creepier when described by the excellent Ronee Blakely in the Craven flick. In place of the memorable Johnny Depp, Amanda Wyss (who did more to make an appealing character in ten minutes than anyone here does in 90) and Nick Corri are a heroine with no zest whatsoever and a hero (Kyle Gallner) in the Depp role who wears a Joy Division T-shirt that turns out to be the most upbeat and interesting thing about him.

   Notable for their absence are unforgettable moments from the original, like the phone tongue, the geyser of blood that represents Johnny Depp’s demise and various other bits of scary business…but when you see how weakly the “Tina” stand-in character’s demise is duplicated, you start to feel grateful for small mercies.

   Oddly, this new version, which cost $35 million, moves far slower than the low-budget 1984 movie, and somehow looks and feels more dated than Craven’s film ever has. Its shortcomings serve to highlight Craven’s gift for economic storytelling, and it replaces his superbly disorientating rubber-reality and surrealistic nightmare imagery with a listless structure and no sense of terror in or out of the nightmare world. One-note performances and repetitive, visually unimaginative dreamscapes keep it from ever truly engaging.

   Haley does his best. The revised, more authentically charred make-up is certainly grim, though this concession to realism and other modifications to the iconic character do the film no favors. The efforts to reinvent Krueger as fairly pitiful paedo results in some unnerving moments (Nancy in a child’s dress at the finale being leeched over) but the plodding script (let’s give a big yawn for internet-based exposition!) is often misguided, with a detour in which the protagonists insist Krueger was actually innocent of the crimes and the parents made a grave error in burning him! Adding further insult is the reliance on loud jump scares and hackneyed shocks that reduce the scariness rather than increasing it.