A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
94 %
Reviews Counted: 31 Fresh: 29 Rotten:2 Average Rating: 7.7/10
Consensus:
Wes Craven's intelligent premise, combined with the horrifying visual appearance of Freddy Krueger, still causes nightmares to this day.
Runtime: 2 hrs 2 mins
Synopsis: A replusive, decaying figure with razor-sharp appendages (and an even sharper sense of humor!) suddenly appears in the dreams of four Los Angeles teenagers. It is the ghost of Freddy Krueger, a suspected child murderer killed long ago by the neighborhood parents. Now he's able to exact his... [More]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Johnny Depp
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Reviews
Comment
An inventive and terrifying horror film that explores the inner psyche and its ability to turn nightmares into reality.
11/03/07
A highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy.
09/21/07
Top Critic
One of the most intelligent and terrifying horror films of the 1980s.
09/21/07
What makes Freddy truly terrifying, and an inspired invention on Craven's part, is that he exists not in the real world but in the shadowy realm of dreams.
09/21/07
It succeeds by preying on archetypal fears and imagery - the myth of the bogeyman, the power of the unconscious conjuring up the worst horrors imaginable.
09/21/07
Craven vitalizes the nightmare sequences with assorted surrealist novelties.
09/21/07
Top Critic
An actual story, made by somebody who cared enough about his ideas to make them different and original.
09/12/07
By 1984, the slasher film had already been done to death, but Craven added a fresh take with his idea of a killer that attacks in dreams.
10/27/06
What’s so clever about Craven’s variation on teen-horror is what now seems so obvious about it: A Nightmare on Elm Street takes all of this fear of unmanageable desires and makes it explicitly, even bluntly Freudian.
10/24/06
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