Jackie Earle Haley, Samuel Bayer Talk NOES Remake

Our never ending insane coverage of Comic Con continues all weekend long. I sure hope you are sitting down and ready for lots of updates because we will be posting a TON of them. Today we have updates from yesterdays press interviews for Nightmare on Elm Street. The full interview will come later but for now here are some excerpts. First off from Jackie Earle Haley on working on the film and playing Freddy Kreuger;

Definitely. Daunting, scary and just super exciting and thrilling at the same time. I mean, just the notion, when these guys asked me to play Freddy Krueger, just the notion… it’s a thrill. It’s scary and it’s a thrill. Again, because somebody has owned the character for so long, but what a wonderful opportunity to get to step in

I thought it would be really interesting giving him a Scottish accent. Not sure why. Think it works though. No, I think it’s definitely a scary process trying to step into the shoes of Robert Englund who has owned this character for decades. He’s done a brilliant job with it. His embodiment, his performance is what makes Freddy who he is.

The challenge now is going back in time and paying homage to this first movie and rebooting it. It was kind of important again to have these qualities that you’re familiar with, the sweater, the hat and the gloves, things we know but also to try to find a freshness and a newness to this re-envisioning. I think the makeup, the Andrew Clement designed, it’s incredible. I think where Sam and I were coming from with it is darker, more serious, less jokey.

On whether he had any nightmares of his own that helped him relate to the character;

Don't know that it really figured into the process but I do recall this crazy recurring dream when I was a teenager. Maybe it started younger. I was literally in the bed that I’m sleeping in so it seems like I’m awake. This big tarantula, six foot tall bug thing chases me down the hall and whacks me.

This day, I could not stop dreaming this thing. It was very unsettling, scary, very bizarre. Then of course there’s the wonderful nightmare of being on stage and the curtain opens and you haven’t even looked at the script. That’s a fun dream.

Director Samuel Bayer also feels that his take on the classic horror tale is quite imaginative and unique saying;

I think our dreams are pretty imaginative. I think it’s one of the things that dates the original series. I look at the original series and sometimes the films look like they were made in 1988 or whenever. When they go into dreamworld it’s cloudy and smoky and fog machines.

I think you’ll see we did a much more sophisticated 20^th century take on the dream sequences. They’re integral part of the movie. That’s what separates this from a maniac running around with a hatchet. Thought out, very intricate, beautiful. They’re not just scary places. They’re beautiful to look at.

I think the scariest stuff is when you believe in your character. I think we put a lot of emphasis in developing our characters, our kids. What Jackie did with Freddy is I think multi-dimensional. There’s a lot of scares in our movie. When blood happens, it’s bloody. I’m not the type of person, I don’t want to depend on blood and gore to scare you.