8 Great Acting Performances That Outshone The Horror Movie

8. Rooney Mara In A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

It’s easy to forget that in the same year as her breakthrough role in The Social Network, Rooney Mara also starred as the alternate ‘Nancy’ in the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street - big shoes to fill after Heather Langenkamp’s fan favourite portrayal in the original 1984 classic.

To put it simply, Mara’s performance ticks a lot more boxes than it does cross-out any, but the movie itself? Well, it’s just another shoddy, pointless remake.

Released 26 years after the original, this 2010 reboot can be praised for its glossy re-envision, as can the cast performances be given a moderate round of applause too, but it's hard to avoid the feeling that it's just a needless and characterless Michael Bay modernisation that simply no one asked for.

If we think back to the 2010s, there was a string of Platinum Dunes horror remakes that pretty much all failed to ignite any significance with fans or critics - including Friday the 13th, The Hitcher, and Amityville Horror - and arguably, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s CGI-infused remake is the worst of them all.

Its writers aimed for it to be darker and scarier re-telling, including the delve into Freddy’s child-molesting back-story, but ultimately, one of the only aspects that provoked any greater sense of fear and terror was Rooney Mara’s performance.

As we’ve now seen in psychological-thrillers like 2011’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or 2017’s A Ghost Story, Mara has a knack for immersing audiences in her melancholic moody charisma. It’s just a shame the rest of A Nightmare on Elm Street failed to deliver anything else, most notably including the failed impossible task of re-inventing Fred Krueger with Jackie Earl Hale.

Sorry Jackie, you did a passable job, but you’re no Robert Englund.