I realize that remakes -- or jumper-cable reboots -- are a necessary and inevitable evil in the movie business, but I’m tired of so many disproportionately disappointing efforts. Regardless, I was looking forward to this remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but only because it stars Jackie Earle Haley, an actor eminently qualified to inherit the role of Freddy Krueger from Robert Englund.

If you’re filming a remake of a horror classic, please bring something different to the table. Try another fresh interpretation that invigorates the material and ups the ante in the scare department. Well, director Samuel Bayer and writers Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer do indeed take a different approach. They leave behind the camp and biting humor of the original to play it straight. The serious tone and overt references to child abuse and recovered memories does make this version of Nightmare relevant because these all too tragic crimes are more prevalent now or at least more high profile than they were in 1984 when the original film was released. But relevance aside, the final result is a grim, pedestrian film that neither raises a pulse nor makes the heart beat faster. This remake isn’t worth the effort or the dollars it took to make it.

One by one, a group of teenage friends each experience terrifying nightmares in which a hideously scarred man wearing a blade-fingered glove tries to kill them. Each makes desperate attempts to stay awake to avoid sleep and eventual death. After Dean (Kellan Lutz), Kris (Katie Cassidy), and Jesse (Thomas Dekker) die violently in their sleep, Nancy and Quentin (Rooney Mara and Kyle Gallner, respectively) investigate and soon discover that along with their dead friends they share a previously unknown history of abuse perpetrated against them when they were children by the man in their dreams, Freddy Krueger.

Bayer’s Nightmare disappoints in so many ways. Visually, the director fails to make a palpable distinction between the real and dream worlds, unlike Wes Craven who created a hypnotic, off-kilter atmosphere for the dream sequences in the original film.  The film’s musical score is forgettable. And, the young actors cast to play Nancy and friends don’t distinguish themselves as separate and unique characters. Mara in particular delivers a lackluster performance as Nancy, originally played as a resourceful, plucky girl by Heather Langenkamp. The expressionless Mara, by comparison, appears vacuous.

Bayer and the screenwriters also make a critical error in their vision for the character of Freddy Krueger. Bayer redraws Freddy the child molester in a more realistic shape. The problem though involves Krueger being a ghost, a gothic character who inhabits the surreal netherworld of nightmares and whose power derives from his history as a horrific memory of violence and shame in the teens’ minds that has magnified over the years as a result of repression. Freddy attacks on his turf; he knows the terrain and physics of the dream landscape while they don’t, which further shifts the power in his direction. With these advantages, Freddy is able to re-establish with Nancy and her friends the terrifying “all-powerful adult perpetrator/helpless child victim” dynamic. If anything, these attributes make Freddy a terrifying, supernatural force -- and the character needs to be approached as such. Instead, Bayer cuts the character down to size and as a result, this Freddy lacks the mythic stature to be truly menacing.

Having said all that, none of the problems with Freddy can be placed at the feet of the Haley, who delivers a creepy and sinister performance with a kinky edge. Haley had the difficult task of acting through that awful melted face with botox-looking make-up that limits the use of facial expressions. His ability to project beyond that mask says a lot for his skill as an actor.

Even if Freddy Krueger were lying in wait to get you when you close your eyes, sleeping is still preferable to watching this uninspired remake of an exceptional horror classic.

(Released by Warner Bros. Pictures and rated “R” for strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror and language.)

Review also posted at www.moviebuffs.com.