"A Nightmare on Elm Street" reboot director Samuel Bayer is looking to return the franchise to its sinister roots.

Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes is behind the new film with producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form at the lead.

Bayer gained acclaim for his commercial and music video work, including the videos for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." However, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" marks his feature directing debut.

"Us going to Sam Bayer for this movie is nothing new," Fuller said during an interview with press on set last year. "We've gone to him on a lot of other movies, and he's passed on all of them. This was the first time that Michael actually convinced him to say yes. Drew and I went to his office and begged him, and he said no, and then Michael said, 'Would you get involved?'"

Bay's pitch helped bring Bayer aboard. But what spurred Bay's interest in Bayer?

"Sam is a really talented director, and visually he's as good as it gets," Fuller explained. "This movie, because so much of it is about dreaming and creating a visual landscape where people are going to get scared, he feels like he is the perfect guy to do it."

Bayer admits he's not a fan of the franchise, especially its arch into campiness during the later films.

"I thought the ideas in the first one were great and I thought that they became parodies," Bayer said. "I think Freddy wasn't scary, I didn't think that the world that was created for each movie was that interesting and -- no, I'm a fan of the idea of Freddy not the movies.

"I mean look ... when I did this movie I looked at like 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Exorcist,' 'The Shining' and you know, it's like, I think these are like the really beautiful horror movies that were done that have really scary and -- but yet are really interestingly made films. They're not just horror movies, they're films. ... I've tried to make 'Nightmare' a bigger film, kind of an event movie."

Bayer points to the "Batman" franchise's successful reboot as a good example of what he hopes to accomplish.

"I'm starting with the glove and the sweater and the hat and the legacy of Freddy, the story of Freddy, but I'm reinterpreting it my way and the way that Platinum Dunes sees it and I think that's really exciting," he said.

Part of that interpretation starts with the visuals, particularly once the characters fall asleep.

"I mean, I look at the old movies and I think the dream sequences aren't that interesting," Bayer explained. "I think they feel like bad Broadway musicals or something, like with steam and smoke and they're not scary, they're not beautiful, they're not interesting.

"You know I've looked at everything from German expressionistic film to Tim Burton movies to all kinds of disparate influences and the one thing this movie is going to have -- it has, I think it has a vision when it comes to the dream sequences. And I think they're beautiful and macabre and scary."

But hypnotic visuals aren't Bayer's only trick; he aims to keep the audience invested in the plight of the film's beleaguered characters.

"We've invested a lot of time and energy to make you care about them and I think that true horror comes out of identifying with the protagonist," he said. "If you believe that someone is a human being -- that they live and breathe and have feelings and they're terrorized by something and you identify with them -- then that's really what horror's about.

"That's why 'Rosemary's Baby' is great because it's a simple story about a simple -- a woman you identify with. 'Exorcist' is a 12-year-old girl and 'Shining' is a seemingly normal family. And so in my -- so in this case, all our kids have brought something to this so it's not just screaming teenagers in peril."

"A Nightmare on Elm Street," based on a script by Eric Heisserer and Wesley Strick ("Wolf," "Cape Fear"), hits theaters April 30. It stars Kyle Gallner (Jennifer's Body"), Rooney Mara (Urband Legends: Bloody Mary"), Thomas Dekker ("Laid To Rest", "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"), Kellan Lutz ("The Twilight Saga: New Moon), Katie Cassidy ("Taken," "Supernatural") and Clancy Brown ("Carnivàle," "The Burrowers").

See more interviews during the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" press event at IESB.