Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) by Jude P — 22 Aug 2015

The Original Nightmare On Elm Street is one of the scariest Horror films back in the 1980's and it is the best out of the popular Nightmare On Elm Street films. This movie is about a group of kids who live in a normal life in Springfield where they go to school etc.

.. All the things that we see in society until today. But soon the teens are being stalked by a demonic, undead killer who can stalk and kill them in their dreams and soon one of them must find a way to banish Freddy Krueger once and for all and end the nightmare they've been suffering.

Ever since I saw this movie it is the film that really terrified me when I saw it during my elementary years, I saw this film on TV when they were regularly airing it on HBO and even though I saw Freddy VS Jason first, this will always be my favorite Horror movie and the best Horror film I've ever watched and it still gave me chills and scared my pants out.

One of the things I like about the original Nightmare On Elm Street is that this movie has a simple yet intelligent premise that keeps you intrigued from start to finish. This is one of Wes Craven's most effective Horror movies that seriously impacts the audiences in their seats with a lot of elements that make a Horror movie work.

Its one of those films that is sometimes unexpected and yet is still terrifying for those who watched the Nightmare On Elm Street series. This is why I enjoyed watching this movie because Wes Craven was able to create a deliberating and psychological Horror film that is smart and extremely creative plus effective as well because this movie is smart, haunting, frightening, super scary and bone chilling at the same time.

The second thing I like about this movie is that this film has loads of extremely memorable scenes that are terrifying, intense, creative and horrific as well(The opening scene where Tina gets attacked by Freddy, The terrifying scene where Freddy attacks Tina in the dream and her brutal death scene where her chest gets sliced and is dragged up the wall by Freddy, Nancy facing Freddy for the first time, Rod's smart and intense death, the scenes where Nancy gets attacked by Freddy, the super disturbing scene where we see Tina in a body bag covered in blood, the scene where centipedes crawl out of Tina's mouth, the gruesome death scene of Johnny Depp's character where he gets sucked down into the bed and blood starts coming out, Nancy getting pulled by Freddy in the bathtub and the suspenceful climax until the unexpected twist ending) and all scenes are combined with a fabulous cinematography from cinematographer Jacques Haitkin which gives the film a haunting feel deep in your thoughts and soul plus I also love the soundtrack composed by Wes Craven's collaborator Charles Bernstein which gives the film a lot of tension and a nightmarish look that will keep you up until 2am in the morning.

The other things I like about this movie is that the film is full of themes and tones that are dark and has a lot of moral values. Since the film has a lot of coming of age themes in certain aspects of the film I think the best thing in this film is the themes surrounding things about families not telling anything to their kids because if you notice the scene where Nancy's mother tells the history on who Fred Krueger is you get to understand certain things about why most families never reveal to their children on the things they did in the past an example is when Nancy's mother tells her daughter what they did to Freddy Krueger like when she and other families wanted him dead since he was a child killer and they burned him alive when law enforcements could not bring him to justice due to the lack of evidence that law enforcements couldn't find to prosecute Freddy Krueger which ends up with the families taking the law on their hands by burning him alive in the place where he lured and killed every child and cover up what they've done and will only reveal that secret when the time is right.

Its one of those moral values that are very deep and is one of the reasons why most families completely keep their dirty secrets from their kids about what they did to a man who keeps killing their kids but could not go to jail because in those years evidence on most criminals were hard to find and without evidence most families have only two solutions which is either wait until the evidence is found against the criminal or take the law in their own hands by killing the criminal these are one of the deepest moral values and themes in film history.

But the best thing about this film is the character of Fred Krueger. This is a different type of villain and I love how he attacks and terrorizes his victims by stalking them in their dreams and Freddy Krueger is very scary and frightening in this film.

Now the acting is amazing, we get to see impressive performances from a stellar casts like Johnny Depp in his first performance on the big screen as Nancy's boyfriend Glen and John Saxon who worked with Bruce Lee in one of his movies as Nancy's father.

We also get to see some fresh faces from the 80's like the beautiful and gorgeous Heather Langekamp as the main character Nancy, Amanda Wyss as Tina, Jsu Garcia as Rod Lane, Ronee Blakley as Nancy's mother but out of all the casts who delivered the best performance is Robert Englund who delivered an extremely frightening and terrifying performance as the burned night stalking dream killer Freddy Krueger and this is still his best film to date.

Plus I love seeing Insidious actress Lin Shaye as a teacher in this film even though its just a small cameo and I was surprised that I didn't know she was Robert Shaye's(the producer of all the Nightmare On Elm Street films) brother at one point.

Director Wes Craven did an amazing and incredible job with his work on this film. This is the movie that made Wes Craven famous after making The Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes this was also before he made the Scream films in the 1990's and Wes Craven still gave me chills when he made this movie he really gave a lot of people nightmares when he made this movie.

Wes Craven is in my opinion one of the most intelligent Horror directors to date he's the type of director who not only scares a lot of people but he also enjoys exploring the psychology of people's minds and fear is what lurks within every person which explains all the Horror movies he made over the years.

Overall A Nightmare On Elm Street is a smart, entertaining, haunting, dark, scary and frightening movie that balance the differences between a dream and the reality and it is one of those films that are very intelligent and very unsettling plus spooky and scary as well.

This movie gets a 10.8/10.