Happy Halloween! ScreenAge Wasteland is proud to present our community’s ranking of the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
Five people took part in sending us their personal rankings of the nine Nightmare movies. We then assigned them points (top spot got 9, last spot got 1) and tallied the scores. In the event that someone hadn’t seen a movie, a multiplier was added to bump that film’s score up to what it would have been if all ten people had seen it.
If you want to see where each Nightmare movie landed on our list, keep on reading. And feel free to agree or disagree with where a film ranked in the comments below!
9. Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) | 7 points
- They gave Freddy a daughter and made him dumb. Actually, they made everything dumb. I’ve only seen this once, and that was more than enough. (Bob Cram)
- By this point, Freddy’s less a boogeyman and more a stand-up comic with a claw glove. Freddy’s Dead is what happens when the joke runs too long—it’s tired, self-aware in all the wrong ways, and directed like a made-for-TV spinoff that escaped the asylum. There is a solid idea buried underneath the Looney Tunes tone: exploring the origins of Freddy’s evil and the psychological rot that spawned him, as well as a town too afraid to have children. But instead of leaning into the horror, it goes full cartoon, complete with 3D gimmicks and video game kills. It’s the series eating itself, burping out punchlines, and calling it closure. A fitting title, at least—this is the moment the nightmare officially died. The only reason this isn’t the worst the franchise has to offer is due to one kill: the kid with the hearing aid. That alone is better than the entirety of the remake. (Sailor Monsoon)
8. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) | 11 points
- I almost didn’t rank this because I thought that I hadn’t seen it. Reading the synopsis, I realized I had – and hated it. I like Jackie Earle Haley, but he’s miscast here and nobody else makes an impression. It’s slick looking, but empty and heartless and, worse, annoying. (Bob Cram)
- Hot take: This remake has a better story than the original. Yeah, I said what I said. While nothing will ever top the creative kills from the original, it’s never made sense to me why Freddy would target the teens of the parents who burned him alive. If he’s a child killer, why wait until they’re teens? As controversial as the remake was concerning Freddy’s new backstory, at least it made sense why Freddy is targeting this group of teens. Unfortunately, that alone doesn’t save this movie from being largely forgettable, with Jackie Earle Haley failing to do anything memorable with Freddy. Okay, that’s a lie. I remembered how terrible his Freddy voice is, and whoever was in charge of that CG/makeup monstrosity that was Freddy’s burned face is hopefully not working in Hollywood anymore. (Marmaduke Karlston)
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) | 15 points
- The last of the “Dream Trilogy” finds all the things that used to be fun about the series – Freddy and his humor, the imaginative scenarios – dialed up so much that it ends up collapsing in on itself. It’s dumb and self-parodying with a few flashes of decent imagination here and there. Just enough to make it better than Part 6. (Bob Cram)
- If The Dream Master was a high-gloss nightmare, The Dream Child is what happens when the dream logic starts eating itself. It’s darker, weirder, and way more confused about what it wants to be. The concept—Freddy trying to be reborn through the unborn child of Alice—is actually bold as hell, but the execution stumbles between gothic surrealism and ham-fisted metaphor. The abortion subtext isn’t really subtext, it IS the text. It’s right there, front and center, awkwardly rubbing shoulders with comic book kills and gooey monster babies. It’s ambitious but incoherent, like the filmmakers wanted to make a grim fairy tale about motherhood but got distracted by Freddy eating souls like oysters. It’s a fascinating mess, but a mess nonetheless. (Sailor Monsoon)
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) | 22 points
- I hated this film when it first came out, because it seemed to change all the rules of the first film, and the tone seemed completely different. I’ve since softened on it, and think it’s a decent entry that tries some different things. (Bob Cram)
- I like and defend this entry more than most. I think this was the last time Freddy was truly scary. Before he became the one-liner jokester in later movies, here Freddy was kept in the dark more with less dialogue. The main reason for this is that New Line goofed and wanted to use a stuntman instead of paying Englund what he deserved. As much a I love Englund, I do think this helped with Freddy being scarier as he lurked in the shadows more. Thankfully, the producers realized their error and brought Englund back halfway through filming to help give us one of the greatest villains of all time. Oh, and the pool scene is one of the best moments of the entire franchise. (Vincent Kane)
T4. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) | 27 points
- This is one of my favorite Nightmare films, but it can’t exist outside of the context of the other films – even though it’s not part of any Nightmare on Elm Street continuity. Ten years after the original, Wes Craven gave us a meta-textual story that has Freddy attempting to influence the real world – including the cast and director of the original film. It managed to make Freddy – or at least the malevolent force behind him – scary again, something I thought was a long-lost cause. (Bob Cram)
- This is not a good movie. Heather Langenkamp’s “son” is easily the worst part of New Nightmare, so, considering he’s in most of the movie, you can see why I didn’t find much to enjoy about this meta-slasher. Not only is New Nightmare bland, but it would have been far more interesting if the movie had been centered around Robert Englund and not Langenkamp. Give us a little “creator being haunted by his own creation,” Wes! (Marmaduke Karlston)
T4. Freddy vs. Jason (2003) | 27 points
- Look, it’s not great, but it’s still way more fun than it has any right to be, given it’s mostly a cash-grab from fans of two franchises. (Bob Cram)
- Freddy vs. Jason has no right being as good as it is, yet somehow it’s my favorite of the NOES movies. Ya, you heard me right! After watching all nine NOES movies, I’ve learned that I couldn’t care less about Freddy Krueger, who is far too cartoony and silly for my liking. However, Freddy’s jokiness works perfectly against Jason’s silent demeanour. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. I also think it is one of the most gorgeously shot movies in the franchise (I mean, the shot of Freddy jumping out of Crystal Lake with the red tinge, FRAME IT!). (Marmaduke Karlston)
3. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) | 31 points
- While not as good as Dream Warriors, this is still prime Nightmare on Elm Street material, with some excellent rubber-reality scenes and decent characters. Freddy is almost a parody of himself by this point, but scenes like Debbie turning into a cockroach are worth the price of entry. This second entry in the so-called “Dream Trilogy” has plenty to enjoy for Freddy fans. (Bob Cram)
- After Dream Warriors resurrected Freddy as a pop-culture icon, The Dream Master doubled down on that momentum—and somehow made it work. This is Freddy at his MTV peak: all quips, neon lighting, and surreal dreamscapes that look like they were storyboarded by a cocaine-fueled art director who fell asleep watching Labyrinth. Renny Harlin turns Elm Street into a visual circus, juggling gravity-defying kills and pop-fueled energy that makes the whole thing feel like a music video from hell. It’s slick, stylish, and absurd—but in a way that feels perfectly in sync with late-‘80s excess. Freddy’s no longer scary, but he’s never been more fun. And it might have the best cast of future victims in the entire series. (Sailor Monsoon)
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) | 38 points
- The first and, for me, still the best. Freddy arrived just when slashers were getting moribund and boring, injecting a much-needed dose of energy, humor and rubber reality into things. While time and exposure have reduced Freddy to a caricature, a figure of fun more than fright, he was terrifying when he first appeared and I still think the original film works best as a horror flick. (Bob Cram)
- Slashers had become stale, and Wes Craven gave the genre a shot in the arm with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Groundbreaking effects and the surreal kills combined with a career-defining performance by Robert Englund (underneath some gnarly makeup) and a kick-ass final girl in Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy, help make ANOES an all-time classic. (Vincent Kane)
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) | 40 points
- The most purely fun entry in the series, with imaginative deaths, more humor, the return of Heather Langenkamp, and Freddy fully coming into his own as a wisecracking nightmare demon – without fully descending into the self-parody that marked later entries. I think this was the first film I saw in theaters, so it’s got a special place in my heart. Also, that Dokken song rules. (Bob Cram)
- This is peak ANOES and Freddy. We get the inventive kills with Freddy hitting home runs left and right with his one-liners. Arguably the best of the franchise and one of the greatest horror sequels of all-time, Dream Warriors delivers from beginning to end. Fun characters fighting back, with Freddy having to step up his game. The “Welcome to prime time, Bitch” line and scene are as iconic as they come. (Vincent Kane)
Is this what you call an upset (or, perhaps, more fittingly, a nightmare)? The Dream Warriors fought their way to the top of this community ranking. Are you surprised it wasn’t Wes Craven’s original Nightmare to do it?
Thank you to everyone who participated in SAW’s seventeenth community ranking!
Do you agree with our ranking? How does your ranking of the Nightmare films look? Share your thoughts in the comments!