Despite a healthy box office take, the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street failed to please both critics and audiences, and it’s telling that there was never a sequel featuring Jackie Earle Haley’s take on the iconic Freddy Krueger. But it’s been nearly a decade since it released, so why not have another stab at resurrecting Krueger for a new audience, especially now that horror’s undergoing a renaissance in terms of box office? Even better, the original and best Freddy, Robert Englund, has a great idea for how the character could return.
The actor’s set to appear in the awesome-sounding AMC documentary series Eli Roth’s History of Horror and was talking the future of Freddy at the 2018 Summer Television Critics Association press tour when he said the following:
“If I had an Eli Roth budget I would have cast different actors to play Freddy for every potential victim. Because Freddy is only alive in the imagination of his future victim. They would talk about it at a slumber party or in a locker room at school, or on the bus going home. All we know about this Fred Krueger is he wears a hat, wears a red and green striped sweater and has a clawed hand. That’s the specifics.
So it could be a red and green cardigan for one Freddy. It could be an old tattered baseball cap for another Freddy. Freddy could be tall, he could be short, he could be overweight, he could be muscular. Every one of the victims could have a different Freddy they imagined. And you could haunt them with that Freddy.”
I’m definitely down with this. Plus, what actor wouldn’t want to pop up in a quick cameo as one of the most iconic, notorious and eye-catching horror villains in cinema history? But though there might be infinite Freddys in his victims’ dreams, there’s only room for one Freddy in my heart. So, that makes Englund’s twist ending all the more satisfying, with the star explaining the following:
“And then at the end, it would be the ultimate victim and we see Freddy peel [his face] open and maybe it’s yours truly revealed – the essence of Freddy.”
Someone get this man a writing deal and have this project greenlit ASAP! Seriously, though, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, watching them at a probably too young and impressionable age and, unlike some other 1980s horror characters, Freddy feels somehow timeless. Englund agrees, too, saying:
“I don’t think Freddy is an ‘80s villain. There’s a huge nostalgia for the eighties for a variety of reasons, but so many horror films and characters transcend that decade.”
So, c’mon New Line and Warner Bros., with IT smashing the box office wide open, The Conjuring universe cleaning up, too, and Michael Myers returning to wreak havoc once more, bring back Freddy and show us all what real terror is.
