The last time
New Line went looking for a school equipped with swimming facilities for the Nightmare
on Elm Street franchise, the necessity for a pool was based on a death scene
that took its place alongside other classic scenes including “girl who
Freddy feeds too much food to,” “teen who becomes comic book
character and then gets shredded into bits of paper,” and “man
becomes a motorcycle.” It all culminated into the worst Nightmare film to
date– The Dream Child.


Now, as Samuel Bayer attempts to reboot (I’m really starting to hate that
fucking word) A Nightmare on Elm Street for the Obama-era, I really hope that
the quest to find a high school with a swimming pool has more to do with the
script rather than some shitty gimmick where a character’s fear of water meets
Freddy’s brilliant sense of humor that he developed somewhere between the time he
was resurrected by flaming dog piss and the time he pretended to be a shark on
the beach.

According to the Daily Herald, Elk Grove High School Principal Nancy Holman
confirmed that her school was one of two Chicago-area campuses that would be
featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

“They contacted, I think, schools all over the nation,” she said, adding that New Line was looking for a site that had a pool.

In addition to the pool, the film will show the exterior of the building, she said.

Filming will include students swimming in the pool, with students auditioning for the chance.

Without having read the script, I suppose it is a little premature to presume that the all-important swimming pool was so crucial because of the role it plays in an elaborate dream sequence. Still, I hope that the filmmakers make the most of the opportunity to truly reboot the franchise and do so by changing everything audiences have come to expect from the dream sequences. When I think of the dream sequences from television shows like The Sopranos, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I get excited at the possibility of merging that type of realism with the terrifying concept of Freddy.

Shooting is set to begin the first week of May with a target release date of April 16, 2010.