#198: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Release Date: November 9th, 1984

Format: Streaming (HBO Max)

Written by: Wes Craven

Directed by: Wes Craven

4 Stars

Out of the three premiere ‘80s slasher franchises - Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street - I would say Nightmare is the most en vogue in current cinema. Watching it tonight (for the first time ever, shockingly), I can see its influence on a number of higher concept horror/thrillers of the last few years. 

That’s not to say the chilling atmosphere of Halloween or the brutal violence of Friday the 13th aren’t also widely imitated, but check out the Smile films, or the two films from the Philippou brothers (Talk to Me, Bring Her Back), or a half dozen recent A24 productions and you’ll see Wes Craven’s fingerprints: stylish blood, violently evocative imagery, and characters having to navigate a dark non-reality.

His Nightmare is some really fun, twisted stuff. I had a great time. 

The story has plenty of pretty standard slasher elements - high school kids in suburbia, a maniac on the loose, out-of-touch parents - but Craven’s idea of having the killer exist in people’s dreams really is a stroke of genius. It gives him endless textures to play with and it gives our killer, good ol’ Freddy, endless options in which to torture his victims (and us, the audience).  

It’s a shame that Craven only had a reported $1 million budget to play with. I can only imagine what he would have done with $5 million, or $10 million. As gruesomely creative as Freddy gets with his thrills and chills, this movie only gets better if Craven could have gotten even bigger and crazier with it. I’ll have to watch the sequels now to see where it goes. 

By the way, am I supposed to criticize the scenes with our lead female protagonist and her mother? They’re pretty bad. The character of the mom, Marge, especially doesn’t work. I don’t know if the problems are with the script or the performance, but you kind of have to tolerate these scenes so you can get to the good stuff. 

But hey, we’re dealing with a low-budget ‘80s genre movie here, folks. Since when is some bad acting going to get in the way of having a great time with a bloody slasher flick? If anything, these strangely unbelievable and slightly wooden characters can lend a genre flick some of its flavor.

And it’s that unique mix of standard slasher tropes with Craven’s original, visionary conceptions that makes A Nightmare on Elm Street a classic of its kind.