A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise Ranked

A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise Ranked 

It's a spooky season, which means it’s time to watch horror movies. A franchise I watched in October was A Nightmare on Elm Street so I thought I would rank all of the films in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Let’s get started!

9. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare: Going into this movie I heard that this is the worst film of the franchise and how this is one of the worst horror movies ever made. Now having seen the film…I can agree that it is true. This is a disaster of a movie that doesn’t have that much to offer in my mind. This film pretty much celitifies the biggest issue with the franchise, it just gets way too goofy for my taste. What made Freddy Kruger this great horror villain and what made him so iconic is how scary he was. He was this thing of nightmares that will hunt you in your dreams. They found such a clever way to have him kill people, it makes him creepy and very unsettling. Here, he’s not scary at all and is just this goofy over the top charaitzers version of him. It doesn’t really feel like the same character we saw in the original 1984 movie. The kills in this movie are weird and lazy and just outright STUPID. He literally kills somebody by scratching a chalkboard. He kills one of the characters by playing them like a video game, it’s just weird and stupid. It falls a lot of the same bags of tricks of the franchise but with nothing new or interesting about them. So once again, Freddy is taking out the lead characters’ friends one by one. People around them don’t believe that Freddy is real. Almost every sequel has that idea inside of it, by the 6th point in time it just gets exhausting. They try to have this victorious finale where the characters kill Freddy, but you don’t really care. Because Freddy’s dead in several of the previous ways and been brought back. So it means nothing when it happens. All in all, easily the weakest entry in this franchise. 

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master: This is where the franchise really started to go downhill for me and I didn’t really care about anything going on. This movie had some interesting ideas inside of it that could have made for a good follow up to Dream Warriors, but in execution just kind of failed. The idea of Freddy getting revenge on the kids who killed him at the end of the third film is a solid idea. I think there’s a lot of interesting character dynamics and story beats you can have with that. But they make the weird decision to kill off all of the interesting and fun characters from Dream Warriors in the first 20-30 minutes of the film. And the rest of the film you’re following this batch of characters that aren’t interesting, in my mind they’re some of the least memorable characters of the entire franchise. I think the recasting of Kristen was a weird choice and the recast was confusing. Because in Dream Warriors Kristen was played by Patricia Arguetta, here she’s played by Tuesday Knight. I didn’t realize that was the same character until after she had already died. Patricia Arguetta had more screen presents in Dream Warriors, no hate towards Tuesday Knight but she didn’t give off the right energy she needed to. There’s some solid moments in here, but the moments are few and far between. Not a very good movie and easily one of the weaker entries in the franchise. 

7. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): Honestly, I really didn’t know where to place this one. I debated putting it higher and lower on this list. But as of now, after one watch I’m placing it right here. There’s some things that I do appreciate about the movie, but mostly I see the negatives it has. On the positive, I think the cast here (for the most part) is pretty great, there’s a lot of very solid actors in here. I’ve seen the entirety of Arrow so it’s nice seeing Katie Cassidy in here. Always enjoy it when Clancy Brown shows up in things. It’s not a fantastic cast, but it’s a solid one with some solid actors inside of it. Jackie Earle Haley does a really good job as the new Freddy Kruger, he’s creepy and gives off the right vibe you expect him to give. It moves at a nice pace, it’s just over 90 minutes long and it gets to the point quick enough it moves from kill to kill pretty fast, I was never bored while watching the film. But the movie does have some big negatives here that really hold it back for me. First up, Rooney Mara just seems to be sleepwalking (no pun intended) through-out the entire film. She’s since said she didn’t really want to be in this movie and you can tell. She’s not enthusiastic at all, she’s very one note and boring here. I actually found Katie Cassidy and her character to be far more interesting to Rooney Mara’s version of Nancy. I wish Rooney Mara was the one killed and Katie Cassidy was the main character, switching up the audience's expectations of what’s going to happen. Second problem, I feel like the movie loses part of the franchise’s charm when it’s more serious. The previous 8 movies were all inherently very goofy, the original while being a great movie has some 80s cheese about it. The later sequels I think that’s a flaw in the film is that they are too goofy. And I feel like doing a more serious approach with not as flashy of a Freddy Kruger makes the movie feel drab and pretty generic to me. I don’t know, in general it’s just a fine movie, it's one that doesn’t offend me. I didn’t really know where to rank it, it’s towards the bottom but could move up or down upon rewatch. 

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child: Again, this isn’t a particularly good movie. It’s still a mediocre film but I think there’s some interesting ideas in here that elevate it above the rest of the films for me. First thing that comes to mind, the idea of Freddy using the dreams of an unborn child to be brought back is very interesting. That’s a clever way to do a sequel to this franchise, it’s a bit odd but it’s clever nonetheless. Also there’s some interesting imagery happening in the film, whether it’s the motorcycle kill or some in the finale there’s some very interesting imagery in here that sticks in your head and is memorable. Honestly, that’s about it. There’s some positives here, but mostly negatives. The big problem here is that it feels like more of the same. There’s nothing really new or creative with this film, it feels like just another one of these movies with characters you don’t care about. It’s also where the franchise was very goofy and it was hard to take Freddy seriously. What made Freddy Kruger this great character in the original film as well as Dream Warriors was that he was this terrifying monster, this nightmare that our characters needed to stop. Here he’s played for laughs and it’s hard to take him seriously when he’s killing people by stuffing them full of food. There’s a few more things that elevate, but still not a good movie by any means. 

5. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: A decent follow up to the original film, that’s just good enough. For me, this is one of the films that is just sort of there for me. It does nothing to make me love it nor does it do anything that makes me hate it. As a matter of fact, the most interesting thing about this movie is the behind the scenes story involving this movie. I think this is one of the best versions of Freddy in the entire franchise, it’s one of the darker versions of the character. Some of the later films went a bit too goofy and wacky with how Freddy was portrayed. Here he’s terrifying and does some terrifying things that stick in your head. I think there’s some interesting ideas in here of Freddy using the body of the lead character to bring himself into the real world. It just makes for something a little bit different to the franchise. On the negative, I think the new set of characters aren’t very interesting. Heather Langenkamp just brings this certain energy to the role, she pops and stands out. Here, none of the characters do anything that makes them pop or stand up. There’s not one character in this movie that I think does anything interesting as characters. Like I said earlier, this movie is good enough. It’s a solid decent follow-up to the original film while not breaking any new ground. 

4. Freddy vs Jason: This is a fun novelty to see two horror icons in Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees duking it out. Now is this a great movie, is it Martin Scorsese’s definition of fine cinema…no it is not. But it is a fun movie nonetheless, yah it is and I had a pretty good time watching it. It definitely functions more as A Nightmare on Elm Street movie with Jason thrown in there. I would say that’s a positive for the movie, I’ve been a big Jason or Friday the 13th fan. Granted, the only films in the Friday the 13th franchise I’ve seen are this and the original film from 1980. Maybe if I watch more of the movies that will change. But I think the character of Freddy and his franchise is more interesting. Freddy is designed to be this flamboyant and obnoxious character so it’s fun that way. This movie very much gives Robert Enguland the opportunity to just go wild and crazy with his performance in the movie. I think they found a clever way to merge the franchises. It's a bit stupid and ridiculous but I think it makes sense and it works for the movie. The characters are solid, they aren’t fantastic characters. None of the characters in this franchise is really BEST OF ALL TIME. But for the movie they’re in, they’re solid characters that I wish we got more of. I wish they did another film in either Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street following up with these characters. It’s a movie that’s fun, it’s watchable. It’s MUCH better than the weaker sequels on this list. As I’m not a mega fan of either of these franchises, I probably don’t get as much novelty out of this movie as other people might. But still, it’s a fun movie that I don’t have too many negatives to say about it. It’s a movie that’s just kind of there as being a good enough entry in each respective franchise. 

3. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare: This is a very interesting film inside of the series, but it’s a fun one and EASILY one of the better entries. It’s EASILY the best entry in the franchise since Dream Warriors. Wes Craven’s returns to the franchise and I think that was much needed. Whenever Wes Craven is involved with the franchise I think they’re some of the better entries of the franchise. He’s a master of horror and brings his skills and talents to this movie. In the later part of his career he directed the Scream movies and this movie is sort of a prototype for Scream. Where there’s a lot of similarities between this film and that franchise. Both of them are very meta in the way they do things, they’re playing against the tropes of the genre. Both of them involve a creepy phone call as a major plot point in the film. Heather Langenkamp isn’t playing Nancy, she’s playing herself. So the movie feels very different inside of the franchise, while not feeling different at all. It feels like A Nightmare on Elm Street but doing something into the mix. I think this is also one of the darker films in the franchise, with some disturbing imagery. Where you have Heather’s 5 year old son being haunted by Freddy and all of this weird creepy imagery involving the son. And I think that adds this unsettling nature about the whole thing. It’s sort of terrifying to see all of this stuff happening to such young kid. Now it’s not a masterpiece, I don’t love it. I think the movie takes a little while to get going and it’s a movie that definitely gets better as it goes along. The finale of the movie is really good, the first act is a bit too slow for me. But in general, this is a very cool entry in the franchise. 

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: Now I don’t have a lot of experience with horror movies, I have some. But I do know that typically horror sequels can be very hit or mess. This one was a hit for me, I thought this was a very cool addition to the franchise. And it had a lot of elements about it that I think worked really well and mixed together made for one of the best entries in this franchise. Right off the bat, it’s great to see Heather Langenkamp back as Nancy. She’s a great character and as far as our heroes of the franchises, I think she’s easily the best of character. I think the idea of Nancy being a doctor of sorts at this mental hospital and the patients are dealing with the same things she went through. That’s very interesting, that’s something new and different for this franchise. It’s not repeating plot points or story arcs before, but it’s really doing something different. I think bringing back her father adds some extra layer into the mix, I think Neil Gordon is a nice side character in this movie. You dive deeper into Freddy’s backstory, but not too much. Freddy Kruger isn’t a character you want to know a whole lot about. But here, they give him just enough backstory to make it interesting. And you get some very creative and memorable kills, the puppet master one is pretty awesome. When you put it all together, you get a movie that is very good. It’s very memorable and I wish more of the sequels did stuff like this. 

1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): The original film in the franchise is still the best, as is the case with a lot of classic horror franchises. For me, this is one of the best horror movies of all time. It has such a great idea for a horror movie of a villain that attacks you when you’re dreaming. Us as normal people can only stay awake for so long before we have to sleep. So there’s this built in tension of trying to stay awake so Freddy Kruger doesn’t attack you and kill you. That’s a fantastic idea for a horror film and they play that out so well. When we see characters start to fall asleep, we know it’s not good. We know that at some point Freddy is going to come and get them. It’s this great idea for a horror film and you gave it to a great horror director like Wes Craven and he can deliver something really really cool. The way he directs certain scenes makes you feel the tension and dread of what’s going on. You get some iconic imagery of Freddy getting ready to attack. Two of the standouts would be when Nancy is lying in bed and you see Freddy on top of him.Or when Nancy is in the bathtub and all you see is Freddy’s glove come up from the water, it’s iconic imagery that shows Craven is a great horror director. Of course, Freddy Kruger is one of the icons of horror movies, he has such a fun and lively personality about him. So easily, without question in my mind the original 1984 film is the best of the franchise.