Ranking Every Nightmare on Elm Street Movie

This Halloween I’m looking back on perhaps the defining horror franchise of the 1980s. Arriving late into the slasher boom, six years after Halloween and four after Friday the 13^th, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street used a bladed glove to carve out its own niche by being more fantastical and surreal. Comedic, even. The franchise has a villain with personality, able to terrify victims with their specific fears in dreams. While created by Wes Craven and juggled by multiple filmmakers, at its heart it’s Robert Englund’s franchise. The actor is synonymous with his character Freddy Kruger in a way other slasher villains aren’t, a deliberate antidote to the purposefully vacuous portrayals of Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. The series may have jumped the shark a few times but when it’s Freddy doing the jumping, I don’t mind too much. Across nine entries, the franchise has gone from atmospheric horror to absurdist comedy to metatextual commentary to gritty remake. Welcome to my ranking, bitches.

9) A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Nothing the 2010 remake attempts works. It wants to have it both ways: harken back to the old fun films while rebooting the series in a super dark direction. Neither is successful. This version of Freddy, now played by Jackie Earle Haley, is explicitly a child molester. In one scene his victims find polaroids of them being abused by him as kids. It’s really heavy and icky, and dealing with a much more real world horror than the fantastical early films, which is not the direction I wanted the series to go but I could appreciate the attempt if they stuck with it. Instead, two minutes later, he’s treated like the old Freddy, making quips about wet dreams in a way that’s supposed to be funny. It doesn’t work. Pick an angle. The darker edge doesn’t fit with the stripy red jumper and goofy hat. Everything is at odds with itself. I also hate the redesigned makeup. Freddy looks like an alien and Haley can’t move his mouth under the prosthetics, with everything having to be ADR’d in post.

The film is such a bland example of the 2000s horror remake, perhaps the worst of the bunch. The characters are dull, there’s no tension, just a reliance on loud noise jump scares, and the CGI is a pale comparison to the inventive visual effects of the original. Using the dreams as repressed memories, exploring past trauma, would be an okay idea if they weren’t so pedestrian and literal. The dreams are used as exposition: at one point a character dreams a flashback he wasn’t present for. All of the teens look about 30 and don’t feel like they know each other, let alone are friends. And then the film introduces micronaps, an idea which ruins the entire concept of the franchise. Characters are so tired they’ll suddenly fall asleep while walking, talking, even swimming, so Freddy can strike at any time. It’s like Freddy kills by producing visions rather than appearing in dreams. The film is just dreadful.

8) Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Freddy’s Dead is a film that knows it’s rubbish, has fun with being rubbish, but at the end of the day is still just rubbish. Set a decade into the future, Springwood is an empty feeding ground for Freddy, exhausted of kids to torment, turning it into a desert town. Not a deserted town but literally a desert town, the lack of teens turning it into an apocalyptic desert for some strange reason. Reason has little to do with anything in the film. It’s a collection of odd, incomprehensible choices, speaking of a franchise exhausted of ideas, this being the end of the original run. It’s a stretch to call it a horror film, with Freddy at his most goofy and cartoony as he begins to haunt his long-lost daughter in vaguely comedic set pieces.

Saving the film from total disaster is one great sequence: the hearing aid scene. Freddy taunts a deaf teen in his dream and it’s one of the more inventive moments of the franchise. It’s not executed perfectly but from this movie I’ll take it. First Freddy takes the hearing aid away, leading to a silent section where the kid can’t tell Freddy is right behind him, followed by the opposite, the hearing aid turned up to 11, making the literal sound of a pin drop head-exploding torture. It’s great, although sadly you have to sit through an otherwise terrible film to get to it. And the ending, Freddy’s apparently final death, is his lamest defeat of the series. It could have been interesting, going into Freddy’s head, his nightmares, but it turns out it’s totally empty in there other than memories of being bullied at school before he’s then beaten to death. A nightmare for audiences, but that’s about it.  

7) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

The franchise’s fourth entry has all the components the series is known for and it does them all competently. I imagine other people would rank it in a better position, but my issue is that while it doesn’t do anything terribly, it doesn’t excel at anything either. It’s bland and the most forgettable of the series, despite having potential. Writing this ranking after watching all nine films, I’m forgetting what happens in this one compared to the others. It feels too closely like a remake of the third and doesn’t have the interesting additions and changes of the fifth. There are some fun deaths, like turning into a giant bug and the water bed scene, but none of them are scary. The best dream moments actually happen without Freddy, such as the time loop and a character getting sucked into a cinema screen. The best thing Freddy does is die at the end, torn apart by the souls of his victims. It’s the best scene of the film.

The Dream Master does the classic ‘fake protagonist’ switcheroo, killing the lead of the previous film at the beginning before focusing on a different character. But it takes too long, the death happening just before the halfway point of the film. We have plenty of investment in Kristen but when she dies we’re given little reason to care about her replacement Alice. Alice could be interesting but there’s not enough time and effort placed on her, despite some cool concepts. The twist is she likes dreaming, a happy place to escape life, and she begins to see herself as the villain by unintentionally bringing others into her dreams for Freddy to slaughter. She has a mirror covered in photos and every time someone dies she takes their photo down, revealing more of her own reflection. She takes on the traits of her murdered friends, becoming a more well-rounded and confident person. These are cool character details! And yet, I don’t really care about her. There’s so much wasted potential deserving of a better film.

6) A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

The first sequel is known as the gay film of the franchise. I had heard this before watching and was expecting the homosexual aspects to be a very 21^st century retroactive reading of the film, piecing together subtle subtext. But no, there’s no subtext to be found. It’s all text, overtones rather than undertones. Surely it had to be intentional. The film is so incredibly gay. And honestly, that’s the best thing about it. It’s the only thing the film has going for it; without it it would be the most forgettable sequel. The actor playing the protagonist is clearly gay, even if the character supposedly isn’t, and being the franchise’s only male lead he’s treated like any of the female characters, screaming and being caressed with Freddy’s blade fingers. He dances, prances, twerks a drawer shut, dreams of bondage and spanking, wakes up to a phallic object covered in pellucid liquid, kisses a girl and freaks out before retreating to his male friend. The list goes on.

But it’s not just little details. Either intentionally or completely accidentally, these points add up to a cool arc about the character Jesse coming to accept who he is. He’s suffering an identity crisis, he’s different, his body is changing, and perceives there being a monster inside him. It’s an easy reading to make. Although, of course, there is actually a monster inside him: Krueger. Freddy looks and sounds great but operates totally differently than he did in the original. The filmmakers are figuring out the rules and what audiences want to see and take some clear missteps. There’s very little focus on dreams, instead with Freddy bringing himself into the real world rather than bringing kids into his, and that’s just boring generic slasher stuff. It plays more like a monster movie, with some cool transforming effects, and a haunted house movie, with birds being possessed and things randomly bursting into flames. Overall it is a fairly trite repetitive sequel that doesn’t stick to the key concepts of the franchise, saved from total forgetfulness by the novelty of the gay story.

5) Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

I don’t quite get the love for New Nightmare. It has great ideas but poor to okay execution. It’s a meta story, with the cast and crew of A Nightmare on Elm Street playing themselves and being targeted by Freddy Krueger ‘in real life.’ It’s certainly an interesting concept at the start but by the third act it devolves into just a standard Nightmare movie, fighting Freddy like any other film in the series, it’s just that the characters’ names match the actors’ names. The meta commentary is perhaps too intensely focused and it feels like an inside joke written by Wes Craven for Wes Craven. There’s little for general audiences here. It lets Craven directly comment on the series itself but ultimately it doesn’t seem like he has much to say.

The visuals are bland, with the film mostly set in brightly lit Californian homes, and the new Freddy design is pretty lame. The film takes an awful long time to get going, with the 112-minute runtime needing to be cut back. And why is the film purely focused on Heather Langenkamp? If it wanted to explore the impact of the franchise on those involved, Craven and Robert Englund should have also been main characters, haunted by their creation. It’s a shame it’s all about Heather and her creepy son. There are good ideas hinted at rather than explored, like the impact of horror films on kids watching them, or the people making them, and how Freddy, a child killer and implied paedophile, is a beloved character who kids themselves dress up as for Halloween. At times it’s a clever movie but never as clever as it thinks it is. If I want a knowing instalment of a horror franchise I’ll watch Friday the 13^th Part VI or a good Wes Craven meta movie I’ll watch Scream. New Nightmare is the awkward middle ground.

4) A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Master (1989)

After going full fantasy with the fourth instalment, what I enjoy so much about the fifth is the effort to go darker and make it at least a little scary again. It’s the gothic entry in the series, with Freddy in a Victorian-style insane asylum, and that wins a lot of points from me. The visuals, including a gorgeous matte painting, are wonderful. The opening of Alice dreaming she is rape-victim Amanda Krueger is unsettling, and the film overall is creepy. At least, until Freddy shows up. The film around him is better but Krueger himself is just as silly, at one point morphing himself into a motorbike and shouting random driving related phrases. His goals are also pure nonsense. He’s using the supernatural powers of Alice’s unborn baby to feed it souls so it turns into him? This plot is pretty terrible and the third act is a giant mess, with it being unclear what’s real life, what’s a dream, what’s happening, and why we should care.

And yet, while everything with Freddy is poor, all the stuff surrounding it, which is usually bad in these movies, is actually good. There’re some themes and ideas being explored. It’s a movie, like the first, about parents and children. It explores characters on the cusp of adulthood being annoyed at the control their parents have over them and yet are fearful of their lives without them. All the characters play into this. Alice is pregnant and has to deal with motherhood while repairing her relationship with her alcoholic father, a lingering storyline from the last film I was pleasantly surprised see pay off. Freddy and Amanda’s relationship from beyond the grave is also focused on. Even the kill scenes are based on fears pushed onto the teens by their parents. There’s the girl raised to be a model being force fed, the diving girl’s pushy parents, and the guy still reading comic books despite being chastised for being childish. In general, there’s more thought and effort put into The Dream Child than most other sequels.

3) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Dream Warriors is what people think of, the tone and style, when they think of A Nightmare on Elm Street, even more than the original. The platonic ideal. From now on the sequels attempt to recapture this instalment. After the unsure-of-itself diversion of the second film, this movie gets back on track, back to Freddy haunting dreams, and acts as a much more connected true sequel to the first film. This includes the return of Nancy, who actually might be my least favourite part of the film. I think she’s an unnecessary connection and unbelievable as a psychologist, with Langenkamp’s poor performance unable to be saved by the white streak in her hair. The one big issue with the film is that it’s very busy, full of ideas, and needed to cut back on its characters. There are three leads, none of whom get much resolution.

It’s a great concept and setting for a sequel, however. An institute with troubled teens, each with an issue Freddy can exploit while making their deaths look like suicide so to remain hidden. This is the beginning of the dreams and deaths of the characters matching their specific desires or fears, really taking the concept to the next level after the original. There’s a huge talent pool both in front of and behind the camera, including a script by Frank Darabont and performances by Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne. And the effects work is fantastic. I love the big Freddy snake and overall the film is willing to be much more fantastical while keeping it just about a horror film. It toes the line well. And it marks the beginning of Freddy 2.0. We get the “bastard son of a hundred maniacs” backstory and he’s used for comedy just as much as horror. It may not be the best but Dream Warriors is perhaps the defining film of the franchise.

2) Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

I think I love this movie. I first watched Freddy vs. Jason a couple of years ago while watching all the Friday the 13^th films, and it didn’t rank particularly high on my list of those movies. But while it’s a poor Jason movie, the crossover is a genuinely great Nightmare on Elm Street film. Yes, to the extent I’m willing to say it’s the best sequel. It’s certainly the most watchable and most entertaining. Even without the fun of seeing the two horror legends face off, I think there’s a great concept here. Freddy has been depowered, his legend dying with the parents not telling their kids about him and even drugging the town with Hypnocil to stop dreams. The tension therefore comes from simply talking about Freddy in the real world, mentioning his name spreads his influence like an infection, rather than just the kill scenes. It’s great, and could be the basis of a pure Nightmare movie. The inclusion of Jason is just an added bonus.

It’s a very 2000s movie, which I have a nostalgic love/hate relationship with. Nu metal and glow stick techno raves; poor CGI and wrestling-inspired fight scenes. Thankfully, even when it’s bad it’s great fun. The only genuine flaw I see is the baggy second act. Some lingering storylines from previous drafts (notoriously 17 screenwriters worked to bring this to the screen) overstuff the movie with unnecessary plotting, from extensive recaps, backstory, cop plots, and the protagonist’s dad maybe being a killer too for some reason. But tying everything together is Robert Englund, who I would argue delivers his very best performance as Freddy. He knows it’s his last movie as the character and is clearly having an absolute blast. I think he’s aged into the role, the moments without the makeup at the beginning are genuinely creepy, and then he truly unleashes Freddy. He’s got the puns, the campy moments, yet there is still a darkness to him throughout that was lacking in previous cartoony versions.

1) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Don’t worry, I got my upset choices out of the way; of course the original film is the franchise’s best. The low budget, the focus on horror, means the film still has some grit that permeated Wes Craven’s earlier films. A darkness; a literal graininess, that serves the material well before the franchise becomes too clean and bright as the 1980s progress. The nightmares are nightmares, not just kooky dreams. And the scenes in the boiler room remain creepy to this day. The original film is when Freddy wasn’t yet Freddy, he was Fred Krueger. Not a joke character but a scary force to be reckoned with. A dream demon, sure, but a child killer and human in the scariest ways.

It’s hard to look back on the original with fresh eyes after everything that followed, but it truly is a fantastic original concept for a horror film. It’s a concept that allows for multiple types of horror: slasher scenes, jump scares, gross out moments, and more disturbing, surrealistic sequences. There are some great iconic images, like Freddy’s face through the wall or the body bag in the school corridor. Yet some of the scariest moments are those we see in the real world: Tina being thrown across the room and invisibly cut is my favourite scene of the series. Nancy is a great protagonist, the best the franchise ever had, despite a poor acting performance. She’s competent, comes to realisations quickly, and the film handles the protagonist fake-out well at the start, killing Tina and then switching perspectives.

The film’s not perfect. It does feel like there’s still some unrealised potential with the dream sequences (although I do appreciate how simple yet surreal most of them are) and the third act is quite weak. The house in the dream at the end is indistinguishable from Nancy’s house in reality, making it unclear whether she’s dreaming or if it even matters, and Craven clearly had no idea how to end the film. But those points are largely irrelevant. The movie has such a vibe, an atmosphere, that none of the sequels could capture in the same quantity. Freddy himself might grow and change and, dare I say, improve, but the films themselves never did.