Nostalgia factors prominently into judgments passed on remakes of beloved films. You may have fond memories of seeing Wes Craven’s 1984 “A Nightmare on Elm Street” as a kid, but chances are if you haven’t seen it since its original theatrical run your perceptions are a little skewed.  What many remember as a terrifying experience that stigmatized crooked fedoras and striped sweaters and left kids everywhere guzzling caffeine to stay awake is actually a relatively campy ride consummated by a wise-cracking Robert Englund.

I point this out not to deface the original film, a genuine horror classic, but to temper inevitable comparisons that may exaggerate the contrasts between the two.  The original, though an intelligent, innovative and iconic film, is not beyond criticism.  And the remake, certainly uncalled for and decidedly inferior to Craven’s film, isn’t the worst possible outcome for such a baffling and unnecessary project.

With that in mind, perhaps the most important difference between the two is that while Craven’s picture was laden with the symbolism of emotional neglect in the wake of tragedy and abuse and introduced the chilling concept of the dreamworld’s direct impact on reality, the remake offers no significant contribution to the horror genre.  It is an entirely inconsequential and vague rehashing of the original film’s themes but stripped of all charm and social relevance.

First time director, Samuel Bayer, is best known for his music video work.  He directed the great “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” video for the Smashing Pumpkins and brings that distinct visual flair to “Nightmare.”  But he seems unable to cross that threshold from three-minute rock videos to layered, nuanced narrative for a feature length 95 minutes.  To be fair to Bayer, the shortcomings of “Nightmare” may not be entirely his doing.  Michael Bay, a former music video and commercial director himself and notorious for spurning depth for visual appeal, produced the film through his remake-happy production company, Platinum Dunes, which has so far remade the horror classics, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Amityville Horror,” “The Hitcher” and “Friday the 13th.”  But let’s not turn this into a Michael Bay bash-fest.  (For that see our “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” review).

Much of the blame for the failure of this incarnation of “Nightmare” may very well rest in the most unlikely of places — Jackie Earle Haley.  The Oscar-nominated actor combines decades of experience and an unerring creepiness to shroud any production he’s a part of in a veil of depravity and malevolence.  Haley’s tormented performances mark the very best that Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” and Todd Field’s “Little Children” have to offer.  Seems a perfect fit for the demented, undead child molester that is Freddy Krueger, right?  Well, except that he’s just not scary — or funny.  Englund’s Krueger managed to be both, sometimes even at the same time.  But based on Haley’s strong track record the source of his ineffectiveness may lie with the director and screenwriters.

The acting as a whole is no better or worse than the original, but the characters certainly lack that 1980s charm.  Craven’s film was saturated with Reagan-era suburban teenage angst.  The kids in that film felt like fleshed-out characters from a specific time and place. The goal of the reboot screenplay by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer seems to be to take everything memorable about the 1984 film and remove all identifying characteristics.  The More generic the better.  Instead of infusing “Nightmare” with a timeless quality, this process leaves the film a floating entity, without context.  It neither tackles specific issues tethered to a time or place nor addresses the broader themes of humanity.  Is it foolish to look for deeper meaning in a Hollywood slasher flick?  Maybe it is.  But it’s hard not to notice that nearly all great horror films are driven by some pulsing undercurrent of social commentary.

But setting aside pointy headed film analysis, at the very least, horror fans expect to see some new and interesting ways that a human being can be killed.  “A Nightmare on Elm Street” does about as well in this department as William Hung doing his best Ricky Martin.