Comic-Con 09: Rorschach IS Fred Krueger!

"Let me not be too much of a sissy!” laughs director Sam Bayer. “There are gonna be exploding, horrific, bloody things that happen... Did you see his head go right into the fire?”

Yes, we did. Sneak footage from the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street gave Comic Con its first ever glimpse of Jackie Earl Haley as Freddy Kruger.

We see him hunted down and sent screaming to a fiery death, tearing off his jacket to reveal that iconic striped sweater as he’s burned alive.

From there, a series of flash-shots showed claws scraping across walls, a girl burning her arm with an in-car lighter to stay awake, another girl standing drenched in blood inside a body-bag...

Debut director Bayer, the music-vid maestro who made his name with Nirvana’s ‘Smell Like Teen Spirit’ video, says the dream sequences are the key to his remake.

“To be honest, the dreamworlds are one of the things that date the original series,” says Bayer. “Our dreams are really imaginative, very intricate and sometimes very beautiful.”

And an Oscar-nominated actor as Freddy?

“To be looking in the mirror at Freddy was surreal,” grins Jackie Earl Haley to Total Film afterwards. “Where am I coming from with it? Darker, more serious, less jokey, scarier, more intense.”

Ready or not, here he comes...

Freelance Journalist

James White is a freelance journalist who has been covering film and TV for over two decades. In that time, James has written for a wide variety of publications including Total Film and SFX. He has also worked for BAFTA and on ODEON's in-cinema magazine.