SPOILERS WITHIN.. From the makers of Terminator 3 comes a film portraying a somewhat believable future where the average human being interacts with the rest of the world behind the veil of robot clones. A concept resembling that of today's internet identities, the chilling similarity to the growing trend of spending hours on end behind the computer at work or at home, from social networking to video game addiction, people just can't seem to pull themselves away from their computers. In the movie, however, it takes the psychology to the next level where people are not interested anymore in being who they are but a more perfected version of themselves: younger, in-shape, adorned with super-human strength and abilities. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't explore this facet of the plot to any extent. Instead, the whole thing seems like an X-Files episode starring Bruce Willis as agent Mulder. What's worse is there's a fundamental flaw in the storytelling. The two FBI agents are trying to figure out how the users of the robot surrogates are dying when their surrogates "die" and who is behind the murders. Now, they build up the question of user-death to a point where you're waiting for the answer and when it finally comes, it's vague and unsatisfying. Instead, the focus remains on the why but never gives us a how. Coupled with a lack of character development on the part played by Ving Rhames, The Prophet (a terrible, terrible alias if I've ever heard one), the movie starts to fall apart half-way through. The Prophet is supposed to be this leader of the Humanist revolution movement who lives among the real humans who deny the existence of surrogates in special colonies throughout the world, surrogates disallowed. When he turns out to be a surrogate himself run by the creator of the surrogate robots, it's not surprising at all because his character never had a chance on screen. In fact, if I were Ving Rhames I'd be pissed. He could have had a whole scene where he discussed his philosophy against "surrogacy" when Bruce Willis entered the human colony to speak with him. Instead, Bruce gets his ass kicked by The Prophet's toadies and that ends the whole opportunity. Maybe this is the way it happened in the graphic novel? If it is, then I wouldn't be impressed with it either. Another poor use of the plot outlined in the beginning is that the surrogate creator, Dr. Cantor, loses his son and Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) empathizes with him that he lost his son as well. This creates a bond between them that moves the story along. In the end, however, Dr. Cantor plans to destroy not only all the surrogates in the world to teach humanity a lesson, but all the users as well. This makes NO sense whatsoever. Why would a man who lost his son and who found solace in his bond with Greer want to kill billions of people suddenly? Maybe it's not so sudden -- Cantor kills quite a few people throughout the movie, but this makes for superficial rationalisation since Cantor's real qualm is with VSI, the corporation which manufactors, markets and distributes surrogates. If Cantor was a man who snapped, we didn't see a before photo, only an after. All of this might have been forgivable if it weren't for all the cliches throughout the movie (the dialogue was particularly bad at parts). Obviously, the moral lesson is clear: humans first. Hmmm, didn't we get that in the Matrix? Or I, Robot? Or Terminator? Shall I go on? Not that it's wrong to pitch the ethical dilemma, but the hard sell is inappropriate at this point. I would have much rather they focused on the characters than on the crime sleuthing (especially since there were a couple of seasoned actors in it who, despite the circumstances, did a pretty decent job). The plot in a noir flick is already a given; adding to it is where a movie becomes a work of art.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American horror film released in the year 1984. The film was written and directed by Wes Craven and was the first film of A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Stars featuring in the movie include John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss and Robert Englund. Set in a fictional town of the Mid-West Springwood in Ohio, the plot of the movie revolves around teenagers who are terrorized in nightmares by ghost of Fred Krueger, a serial child killer. The estimated budget of the film was $1.8 million which was earned back in the very first week of the film's release. Grossing around $25.5 million on the US box office, the film is one of the most popular films in the genre of horror movies. Because of this, Fred Krueger, the villain of the film, has become a very famous villains in the history of cinema. According to Craven and the critics, the film also owes some success to Halloween which was quite influential in spawning the line of slasher films.
Amanda Wyss, Tina Gray, a teenager has a nightmare in which she sees herself being brutally killed and she is found dead in reality also. Her boyfriend, who was sleeping with her that night is arrested on the suspicions that he has killed Tina. Similar dreams attack Nancy now, Tina's friend, who rush to the police only to find that Rod, Tina's boyfriend, has also been strangled by his bed sheets. After few more dreams, Nancy finds a battered hat who is found to be belonging to Fred Krueger who had killed many children around a decade ago. He was buried alive by the vengeful parents of the killed children and now it seems that he is taking his revenge on other children. Ultimately, Nancy drags Krueger out of her dreams and sets him on fire and draining him of all his energy.
The premise of the film is the distinction between reality and dreams. Fred Krueger, the villain of the film exists in the world of dreams but yet has the ability to kill in reality. The performance of the movie was moderately fine commercially, relying for the large part on the word of mouth. It opened in 165 cinemas in the US in November 1984 and eventually earned $25 million at box office of America. In addition to that, the film was released in Australia, Canada, China and Europe. Rentals and sales of the film was strong and it achieves the status of cult classic very soon. Since then, it has also been released in the form of DVDs.
Since the release of the film, critics have praised it for its ability to break the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. The Rotten Tomatoes has given a rating of 94% to the film and it ranks #17 on the Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments of 2004. This is a four hour program which selects cinema's scariest moments.