Onetwomore reboots are coming for you. Just five years after Platinum Dunes ill-fated A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Line has announced they intend to return prized bogeyman Freddy Krueger to his former onscreen glory with a fresh remake/reboot/rehash/cash-grab. The Wrap reports that David Leslie Johnson has been tapped to pen a new Elm Street for New Line, a company fondly nicknamed the house that Freddy built. Freddy's a great villain and the concept of a monster that hunts you in your dreams is endlessly fertile. Craven mined it with some truly iconic moments and using remarkable cinematic techniques and thrifty craftsmanship (remember the scene where Freddy comes out of the wall? That cost a mere $10) he was able to conjure up great scares in service of imaginative storytelling. Later sequels were less daring or innovative. 1994's New Nightmare, Craven's only other addition to the franchise and a meta-textual front runner to Scream, breathed fresh air into the series by dragging Freddy into the world of the film-makers, but it's the only subsequent installment with a memorable spin on the mythology. The other VHS-era entries fumbled their potential on a sea of tonal miss-ques (the second installment plays as an accidental exploration of teenage homo eroticism) and an increased commitment to rendering Freddy a figure of comedy rather than horror (a tend which reached its nadir with 1991's dismally unfunny Freddy's Dead). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=karHu2wxb8Q Johnson's task is surely to transform the dream-stalker from bumper-sticker back to the bastard son of 1000 maniacs. Credits like Red Riding Hood and Wrath of the Titans inspire little confidence, but the writer's 2009 cult favourite Orphan promotes just the level of imagination, gallows humour and savagery the project requires. Johnson must implant something fresh into the dreamscapes (the 2010 remake repeated the boiler-room aesthetic to the point of parody), and limit Freddy's court-jesting, but if he does, we might see the gloved-killer return to his halcyon days.
