1984 called. It wants its horror icon back.

There's one truly terrifying moment early on in the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake. During an avid-fart credits sequence, the words "Produced by Michael Bay" flicker across the screen. It's the only genuine scream this otherwise-lifeless dud can muster. Bay's Platinum Dunes have mastered the art of taking once-relevant horror films and turning them into generic conveyor belt slop, devoid of any of the social commentary that made their originators worth the time. The original Elm Street can be read as a statement on the Vietnam draft, with Freddy Kruger standing in for the US government that was all-too-keen to dismember the dreams of American youth and send them off to their death. Dunes' remake has nothing close to this subtext - in fact, there is no subtext. Also lacking is the weird, ethereal quality that made Wes Craven's 1984 original so damn creepy - instead, here it's never ambiguous as to where reality and the dreamworld cross.

To make things worse, Jackie Earl Haley's take on Kruger plain sucks. True, by the time we'd rolled around to the eighth installment of the original franchise, Englund's Freddy was little more than a comedy MC preying on teens who frankly deserved to meet a sticky end. But 2010's Freddy possesses none of the tricksy gimmicks that filled the old series with invention - here, he's just a proto-slasher who talks too much (mostly in unnecessary expositional diatribes) and barely seems capable of doing the job - how many times do his victims need to fall asleep and escape his clutches before he can actually get around to finishing them off? And to cap things off, his objects of prey are a bunch of bland every-teens with no distinct foibles or character traits to make them worth rooting for. It's a testament to how badly-structured the screenplay is when we spend close to the entire first act focusing on a character who is then thoughtlessly slaughtered, only for us to shift on to the next dullard heroine. By this point, caring is no longer an option.

That's not to say the current crop of original horror pictures are much better, though. Take, if you'd be so kind, Tom Six's The Human Centipede (First Sequence) - which is causing all kinds of internet slobbering right now on account of its dark, controversial nature. What they're failing to tell you is that it's actually a dull, poorly-acted mad scientist picture that rarely manages to muster much in the way of outrage or shock. The simple premise sees a retired German surgeon abducting people so he can create a - you guessed it, you fucking star - human centipede, complete with an intestinal tract that runs through several bodies. It's a neat concept, in theory, and some splashes of jet-black humour help it through it's early stages. But it seems so eager to please fans of both the lamentable Saw series, and those oh-so-more-intellectual types who like their horror with a more perverse Asian bent, that it struggles to find its own feet (or in this case, knees). The victims are obnoxious, the doctor's actions outside of his lab are baffling, and even the most grotesque of situations seems somewhat lukewarm in the cold light of day. Maybe I'm just desensitized beyond all repair - or maybe it's just a big hoo-haa over nothing.

To prove that I'm not going to waste every entry in this blog on slagging off movies (believe it or not, I actually love quite a few of them), I'll use this closing paragraph as an opportunity to pimp Chris Morris' excellent Four Lions. A tabloid-baiter of the highest Morris pedigree, it's a radically funny flick that suggests those responsible for some of the most horrific crimes are, in fact, a bit low on intelligence and far too easily-lead. Morris even manages to cram in some oddly touching moments that rescue his protagonists (antagonists? For this viewpoint, it's hard to say) from simple caricature. It's yet another sterling effort for British cinema (alongside the recent Disappearance of Alice Creed and Exit Through The Gift Shop), and as such is well worth seeking out.