If you’ve worked your way through the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises and are at Nightmare on Elm Street, congratulations. You’re about to complete the main slasher trifecta. Here are the best Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
What are the best A Nightmare on Elm Street movies?
Let’s get this out of the way. In the words of Drew Barrymore’s character in Scream, “The first one was good, but the rest sucked.” That statement, even if coming from a fictional character, is somewhat accurate if a bit harsh. But the statement was another meta-commentary by the Scream director Wes Craven, who wrote and directed the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven also directed the seventh film and co-wrote the third, so he’s slightly roasting the other movies in Scream — and himself, of course.
But beyond this bit of horror trivia, there is some amount of personal preference here. “Sucked” might be too strong a word for all NOES audiences, but the sequels are definitely polarizing, and plenty of people think they suck or they’re brilliant. Not much of a median.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The first to kick off the franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street came from the visionary mind of Wes Craven, one of the true kings of horror. The film follows a group of teenagers who are hunted and killed in their dreams by a nightmarish figure in a striped sweater with metal-bladed fingers. Speaking of metal hands, Johnny Depp made his film debut here, before donning his own pair of scissor-hands in 1990. The rest of the cast includes ’80s legends Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.
Written and directed by Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street was made on a shoestring budget of about $1.1 million and was one of the first films produced by New Line Cinema, which had mostly been a distributor up to that point. It went on to gross $57 million worldwide and earned critical and audience acclaim on its release. Today, it’s remembered as one of the greatest horror movies ever made, particularly for its brilliant way of blurring the line between dreams and reality. The film constantly keeps you on edge and delivers some of the most disturbing and unforgettable images in horror history.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Though Wes Craven didn’t direct this one — Chuck Russell took the helm — but Craven’s involvement as the co-writer on the script helped keep the essence of Freddy Krueger alive. The first sequel fell a little flat without the original creative brain, and Craven’s return to the project brought back some of the good stuff, giving it second place on our list.
The sequel’s sequel follows a group of troubled teens confined to a psychiatric hospital. They quickly realize that Freddy isn’t just haunting their sleep, but he’s feeding off their vulnerabilities. What makes this movie so good is that these teens aren’t as powerless as he thinks they are. With guidance from a returning Nancy Thompson, they discover they can manipulate their dreams. Kind of like X-Men meets Stranger Things, each teen develops unique “dream powers” that reflect their personalities, from telekinesis to projecting nightmares into the real world. They can use these powers to take on the killer Freddy and keep this third film interesting.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
One of the more polarizing picks on our list, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, goes very meta. Instead of a film portraying a fictional killer who stalks fictional teenagers in their dreams, this version is actually Freddy Krueger, hunting the people who are part of the films about him. He’s a fictional movie villain, but he’s after people who are fictionally portraying their real selves. If that sounds confusing, it’s less so on screen than on a horror write-up. We’ve got real people in the movie industry playing themselves, so naturally, we would have Heather Lagenkemp back as herself, having played Nancy in earlier films. All around, it’s a cleverly crafted deconstruction of a sequel that keeps things fresh.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Some say this movie is an abomination, others call it 50/50, and a few even think it’s brilliant. We’re placing it midway down the list of all the Nightmare on Elm Street films. Following the events of Dream Warriors, Kristen, Joey, and Kincaid have been released from the asylum and are trying to get back to their normal lives. But one night, Kristen dreams she’s in a boiler room and gets the nauseating feeling that Freddy might be back. Sure enough, he is. But there’s also a new player in the game: Alice, a girl who has the extraordinary ability to inherit the dream powers of anyone who dies at Freddy’s hands. As Freddy claims more victims in even more inventive ways, Alice grows stronger with each death. This brings us to one climactic showdown.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
Directed by Jack Sholder with a script by David Chaskin, this Wes Craven-free sequel starts five years after Freddy’s defeat in the first film. The Walsh family has moved into Nancy Thompson’s old home, and their teenage son Jesse finds her diary detailing her nightmares, which are very similar to Jesse’s. Jesse then dreams of Freddy, who demands that Jesse start killing for him. Terrified, Jesse tries to keep himself awake, but somehow that doesn’t stop the violent deaths at the hands that look like his own.
The plot does sound enticing and is as much a possession movie as a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. It remixes the horror formula, choosing to do something else rather than just bringing the killer back in the same ways (looking at you, Michael and Jason). There’s also a thematic subtext of suppressed sexuality that adds a new layer of interest. Still, the film has some problems with technical effects and acting that knock it down a few notches on our list.
How we picked the best A Nightmare on Elm Street movies
We narrowed down our picks for the best A Nightmare on Elm Street movies based on critic and audience consensus, as well as whether the films managed to do something different in the world of horror. Not all of them are great, but many play with the form in ways that set them apart from other franchises. For that alone, it’s one of the best horror franchises, period.
