Every A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie Ranked
It’s been 15 years since the last movie in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series was released. Over 20 since the last one worth talking about. While the series has been on indefinite hiatus while people try to figure out how to bring it back…it remains one of the most famous slasher franchises in film history. It’s also one that we never got around to ranking for some reason. Well…we can only control one of those things.
I’ve long held the opinion that the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise contains three absolutely excellent movies. You can rank them in any order…as long as they’re on top. It’s important that I point out how close the top three movies in the series are since I know people are very protective of their favorite. If (or when) you see your favorite Freddy movie ranked third on this list…remember that it’s basically tied for first with the two listed above it. Or that rankings are totally meaningless. Either way.
The Nightmare franchise is an interesting one. It contains six fairly straightforward movies that exist on the same timeline…a meta-story that closes out the initial series’ run…a crossover with another popular slasher franchise…and a remake that is terrible and will be at the bottom of this ranking. Spoiler…for ten seconds from now.
Without further ado…our ranking of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Listed from worst to first as the movie ranking Gods intended.
9. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The Remake Era Claims Another Victim
The remake era of horror lasted a shockingly long time. Everything from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to Halloween to The Omen was redesigned for a new, glossy age. These releases ranged from legitimately great (The Hills Have Eyes, Evil Dead) to perfectly enjoyable (Friday the 13th, Piranha) to abominations (You guessed it…A Nightmare on Elm Street). It was inevitable that Wes Craven’s creation would get swept up in the remake onslaught. Almost everything did. Almost everything else fared a bit better.
The most obvious issue with a remake is that the actor playing Freddy Krueger isn’t as replaceable as he is with Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. Robert Englund played Freddy in the other eight movies on this list. Jackie Earle Haley plays him here. Haley isn’t actually the problem with this mostly lifeless retelling of the Nightmare story. He’s giving a quieter, more nuanced take than Englund settled into for the back half of the franchise…which is, honestly, a welcome change. It’s everything else that’s the problem.
After a decent opening…the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street just falls apart. It feels tired. It feels out of step. Worst of all…it feels wholly unoriginal. Rooney Mara sleepwalks through her role as Nancy. It’s surprising that the film doesn’t have a much higher body count given she appears to be unconscious the entire time. Katie Cassidy fares much better as this film’s Tina stand in Kris. A pivot to a different lead would have been a godsend. Not to mention the only original thought the movie would have mustered up. The movie uses some brutal CGI effects to do things that Craven solved practically 25 years earlier. It’s a mess. And the only entry on this list that I wholeheartedly recommend skipping. With apologies to genre stalwart Kyle Gallner who does his best acting opposite a block of wood while delivering a tired story.
8. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
A Parody of Itself
New Line saw the writing on the wall with the Nightmare franchise by the time 1991 came around. They’d run it into the ground with too-quick sequels largely delivering diminishing creative returns. The drop from 3 to 4 to 5 is quite steep, isn’t it? The drop to 6 continued the trend…though not as steeply. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is probably around the same quality level as the fifth film that preceded it. It gets ranked lower because, for all its equal faults, The Dream Child feels more connected to the franchise than Freddy’s Dead does. This feels like a gimmick to draw one last box office win…and like no one involved took it that seriously.
From a 3D ending to gratuitous cameos…Freddy’s Dead just isn’t a serious movie. It fits the over-the-top choices that star Robert Englund had begun making…but it doesn’t feel like a Nightmare movie. It feels like a parody of one. There are a few fun moments…but they were years past adding anything interesting to the lore at this point. Actually, that’s not quite true. Freddy’s Dead has one fascinating idea that would have made for a better starting point for a film than the “secret child” one it uses. The town of Springwood has become completely bereft of children. Freddy got them all. What he left behind was a devastated town unable to put back together the pieces. Where’s that movie?
Instead, Freddy’s Dead aims to give the character a big ending…by introducing an until then unknown child and doing nothing but sight gags for an hour and a half. A major disappointment. Hardly the only one in the series. But the only one that feels, strangely, on purpose.
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Abort
As just mentioned in the write-up for Freddy’s Dead…The Dream Child isn’t very good either. There’s a tonal oddness to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 that the rest of the series doesn’t have. It’s a dark movie…almost gothic in its style…but Englund is still going for laughs. The result is a puzzle that never quite fits together despite a killer concept. The Dream Master survivor Alice is pregnant…and a fetus sleeps most of the time. This allows Freddy to wreak extra havoc on the film…and for them to play fast and loose with when dream sequences begin.
Sounds fun, right? Englund surely must have thought so with his one-liners and physical comedy bits. The problem here stems from the director being on a completely different page. That page is interesting in its own right…but it doesn’t fit what anyone else is doing. Director Stephen Hopkins seemed dead set on adding some style to the movie. It doesn’t feel like he ever bothered to tell anyone else.
Still, fans of the pretty good 4th film will get to see the continuing exploits of its survivors. Being a direct sequel helps The Dream Child find some footing. That’s pretty much the only harmony that the movie ever finds, however.
6. Freddy vs. Jason
More of a Dream Than a True Nightmare
After relevancy had long waned for both the Nightmare series and the Friday the 13th franchise…we finally got the showdown every schoolkid had talked about since 1984. Freddy vs. Jason is an entertaining monster rally that skews more towards Nightmare than Friday…but really more towards comic books and pro wrestling than horror. The best way to describe Englund in this one is “loud”. The final time he would play his most iconic role in film is as cartoony and campy as they come. But it fits the tone of the movie…so that beats The Dream Child.
Freddy vs. Jason is so of its time that it can’t feel at all like the films of the characters whose times had long passed. These were 80s stars who hung on too long…but people really wanted to see them together and the movie did huge business. Even with a length and complicated production process…it’s madness that there wasn’t a direct follow-up on screens within three years. Audiences still cared…even if New Line didn’t seem too anymore.
The movie itself is mindless fun. It has some dumb moments…some odd moments…and a story that…who cares? It’s all just preamble for the fight the world was waiting for and on that front it delivered. Despite two more films featuring the character arriving in the 21st century…Freddy’s true end was nearly a decade prior to this. Even with a fun outing here…it still can’t help but feel like it when watching Freddy vs. Jason.
Read our review
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
A Cult Classic Buoyed by Time
Freddy’s Revenge isn’t a good addition to the title of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Who is he getting revenge on? Nancy Thompson has moved on (for one movie). No one who had a hand in defeating him in the original is around to get revenge on. If it means revenge on the people who killed him in the first place…isn’t that the plot of all these movies? Including the original? The title may not make sense…but A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’s place on this list does. And it has almost nothing to do with the quality of the movie itself.
To understand how a movie that wasn’t thought of too kindly upon its release lands in the middle of the franchise ranking…simply look at what’s ranked above it…and what’s ranked below it. When it came out it followed an excellent, original piece of work. The movie that followed it is often cited as most fan’s favorite in the series. Even the fourth movie is a fun one. Poor Freddy’s Revenge sat around being the redheaded stepchild of the franchise for a long time. But time kept passing…and we got The Dream Child…and Freddy’s Dead…and the remake… Suddenly A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 isn’t the worst thing attached to Freddy anymore. It took decades…but it’s now in the middle. And it didn’t really have to do anything to get there but wait.
The story is kind of a mess, but it does some cool things. This is, of course, the one known as the “gay” one for its not-so-subtle subtext. Those aspects are some of the best things about it in hindsight. It doesn’t feel like any of the other slashers of the era…and the era was completely overstuffed with slashers. There’s some fun and darkness and gnarly effects in here. It just isn’t the original. Which isn’t its fault either.
4. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Leftover Fun
Freddy was flying at his highest point heading into the fourth movie in the franchise. Dream Warriors was a wildly good time that saw interest in the character reaching a peak in pop culture. Suddenly, Freddy was everywhere. A mainstream child killing slasher monster. Who would have thought? Director Renny Harlin, more than anything, understood that people wanted to see something fun. Logic be damned…The Dream Master is a lot of fun. It brings back survivors from part 3 (briefly and with a notable recast) and passes the story onto new final girl Alice. There are a lot of fun sequences in The Dream Master…even if it feels like it is largely riding on the coattails of the tone Dream Warriors set before it. It’s bigger, brighter and dumber.
Alice’s story is one of the best in the franchise. A shy, inverted inevitable victim who gains strength from losing the people she cares about. In the end, Alice becomes a badass hero ready to match up against the stubbornly unkillable nightmare killer. Englund finds the exact right tone for his punchlines here. It’s lighter than any performance before…but it’s still rooted in the kill over the laugh. Outside of basically playing a different character in New Nightmare…this is the last time we’d see that.
One of the things that makes The Dream Master remarkable is just how watchable it is. You might not remember that until you’re 20 minutes into it…but the moment will come where you think “this is kind of awesome…” and the movie never really breaks from that. Even when it’s doing something stupid like having a character fight with an invisible Freddy. Though there are a clear top three in the Nightmare franchise…Part 4 has carved out a place above the rest.
3. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
The Most Fun You Can Have in a Nightmare
I know. I can hear you complaining while writing this. But…it’s the best one! It’s my favorite! I’ve seen it a hundred times! Well…I’d refer you back to the opening of this article where I proclaimed a three-way tie atop the franchise rankings…but, instead, I’ll try to explain why it’s ranked third even though I largely agree with your points. Dream Warriors is the most entertaining Nightmare movie ever made. Full stop. No argument. What it isn’t, however, is original. It’s bigger…it’s everything a sequel should be…I’ll even accept an argument that it perfected the formula. As long as it’s acknowledged that it followed that formula. The two films ranked about it here shatter their expected formula. They are the perfect bookends to the (real) franchise. And they launched two different eras of slasher films.
So…yes…Dream Warriors goes third. If it’s your favorite movie in the franchise…I don’t even disagree with you. I’ll gladly accept the argument that the best version of something outweighs the invention of that thing. I just don’t happen to agree with it in the case of the Nightmare franchise.
But…look…this is a great movie. Nancy returns to help a new generation of Elm Street kids survive Freddy’s nightmare attacks. Her father returns to help her…giving the story an emotional core (based on characters it didn’t create…sorry). The new kids unlock dream powers and take the fight to Freddy. It’s all…iconic and wonderful. One of the best slasher movies ever made. Just like two other entries in the Nightmare series are.
Read our review
2. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Ahead of Its Time
I can’t imagine there will be much consternation about ranking the movie at #1 where it is…which means this will probably be the most controversial ranking here. It shouldn’t be. It could be higher. If some things had played out a little differently…it would be. I’m not talking about within Wes Craven’s goodbye to his iconic character…I’m talking about peoples long held perception of it. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was simply ahead of its time. Two years ahead…as it turned out. In a just world New Nightmare would be seen as the film that kicked off the post-modern era of horror. Not just slashers…horror. But it bombed. The franchise was DOA before Craven returned to tie a completely unique bow on it. His next film will always get the credit that New Nightmare was meant to receive. That’s when he made Scream.
If New Nightmare had one-tenth of the importance that Scream carries with it…it would be one of the most important modern horror films ever made. It went places…pushed things forward…at (almost) the exact right time. It just…missed. New Nightmare recontextualizes Freddy as something mythic…it paints these stories as something everlasting. And, most importantly for where the genre was about to head, turns the camera somewhere other than the usual places. It isn’t just the seventh slasher movie in the Nightmare franchise. It’s something more. Where Scream looked at the effect of the genre on the people who watch slasher…New Nightmare focuses on the effect on the people who make them.
Withs series best performances from Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and (IMO) Robert Englund, New Nightmare brings the myth into reality. Its callbacks aren’t fan service. They’re commentary. It’s a brilliant work that predates the next era of horror and remains as vibrant and fresh today as it was when no one watched it in 1994. It was the second time that Craven delivered a movie that told the genre exactly where it needed to go next. In fact, it was the second time in this franchise.
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1. A Nightmare on Elm Street
An Original Right When We Needed It
The original Nightmare was the breath of fresh air that the slasher genre needed in 1984. Just six years after John Carpenter’s Halloween…a zillion copycats and rip-offs had oversaturated the market with nothing new to say. Wes Craven gave it something new. Freddy Krueger became an instant icon…a slasher killer with personality and a new trick up his sleeve. He hit you when you were the most vulnerable. When you are asleep. And everyone…eventually…has to sleep. Blurring the lines between reality and a nightmare world made anything possible in a genre that had become known for its repetition and lack of original ideas. Craven pushed everything forward…and made anything possible.
Modern slashers owe almost as much to 1984’s Nightmare as they do almost anything else. In the pantheon of slasher films…it sits behind Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Halloween in importance. Firmly on a tier alongside Black Christmas and Craven’s own Scream. These are the cornerstones of what the genre is. None of them broadened the spectrum of what the genre could be more than A Nightmare on Elm Street. The rules set in place by previous movies still applied…but the story was a revelation. Slasher movies had lost their way with that years before. Now…any story could be found in a slasher. And every town had an Elm Street.
The movie holds up incredibly well (aside from a wonky final image that never really worked anyway). As a concept it remains one of the scariest, most effective pieces of horror ever produced. You’re going to fall asleep. Whether you’re a character in the movie…or a viewer watching it on a screen. You’re going to fall asleep…and Freddy Krueger can find you when you do. Wes Craven understood scary as well as anyone who ever made a horror movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street is, without question, his greatest contribution to the scary part of horror. And one of his many to the brilliant side of it.
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