Updated ‘Nightmare’ leaves a little mark

May 1, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By ROGER MOORE

Orlando Sentinel

Jackie Earle Haley, the fans’ choice to take on the role of Freddy Krueger in the remake of the 1984 bogeyman blockbuster “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” proves stunningly, rousingly ... adequate for the job.

A fine actor who barely registers through the more realistic burn mask and hoarse, processed voice, Haley handles the few passable jokes and imitative finger-knives shtick in the manner we’d expect.

As to putting his mark on the character Wes Craven created and Robert Englund made his own? Not so much.

It’s in the tale’s flashbacks, when we see a pre-burned Freddy Krueger and discover what caused him to torment the dreams of select teens in Springwood, Ohio, that Haley, whose comeback began with “Little Children” and reached some sort of peak with his turn as the avenging Rorschach in “Watchmen,” earns his pay and deserves the fan support that pushed New Line into giving him this role.

Director Samuel Bayer nicely suggests the surreal dreamscapes where teens doze off and allow Freddy to have his bloody way with them.

But this script lacks the moral ambiguity of the original film as we see generic pretty-teens dispatched, one by one, by the guy in the fashion- statement sweater and fedora. It’s a movie that starts slowly and only begins moving us to the edge of our seat in the third act, adequate for a horror picture, but no more.

In 1984, there was no Red Bull to keep teens awake, no video blogs for them to recount their dreams and hope others have answers to what’s happening to them, no cell phones with their killer “Freddy Krueger aps” to keep them from dozing off and succumbing to his dream-murders.

The dialogue is a tiresome recycling of the “You’re not REAL,” “Am too,” “Are not” arguments of the original series of films.

The effects, in most cases, better the 1984 state-of-the-art, though in a couple of cases — Freddy coming through the wallpaper, for instance — the old, organic effect looked real and was more frightening.

Fans likely will find this more than adequate. But Haley’s too good to be sentenced to a life of endless, declining-in-quality sequels and costumed appearances at conventions.

That’s the real nightmare here.