A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984) might haunt your dreams

A Nightmare on Elm Street is considered one of the top horror movies ever to be made. It’s release date was on November 9, 1984, containing future stars such as Johnny Depp and Robert Englund. The movie director and writer, Wes Craven, originally wrote the movie claiming it was a true story he read about in a newspaper in the 70s.

Freddy Krueger, who was burned in a boiler room he worked at in the early 80s looks for revenge. He came back to haunt the children of the parents that burned him. This included main character, Nancy Thompson, whose dad arrested Kreuger. The children begin experiencing terrifying nightmares involving a burned man wearing a glove with razor blades for fingers. He would haunt their dreams, and he seems to be out to get Nancy Thompson. Freddy begins to kill Nancy’s friends, starting with Tina, and then to Rod, Tina’s boyfriend.

Nancy begins to realize that she needs to take down Freddy and calls up her boyfriend Glen and they begin to come up with a plan. She then hears sirens outside and sees flashing red lights and knows that Glen is dead, from Freddy Krueger. Nancy tells her dad to break down the door in twenty minutes, giving her enough time to kill him in her dream. She sets up booby traps all around her house and then falls asleep. Sure enough, Freddy is back to haunt her dream. She then wakes up to her alarm set before falling asleep. At this point she assumes she is crazy, but Freddy goes on to attack her in this world also. She screams out to the police officer that she has him but he ignores her, she is on her own. Freddy then kills Nancy’s mom Marge, in her bedroom.

The ending of the film comes up next and is led up to by a powerful quote by Nancy. “I know you’re there, Freddy…I know you too well now, Freddy…It’s too late, Krueger. I know the secret now. This is just a dream. You’re not alive. This whole thing is just a dream. (She turned toward him and spoke firmly) I want my mother and friends again. I take back every bit of energy I gave you.”

The ending of this film to me, and a lot of viewers, was not as good as expected but ironically is actually an unexpected twist. It makes the audience rethink the whole movie and then further confuses them with the last scene. The last scene may be another dream or it might be back to reality, no one really knows! But it does in fact do a good job of setting up the movie’s sequel.

One thing that made this movie so popular in its day and that makes it still watchable today is its special effects and how advanced they were for the time.  Wes Craven was even turned down a few times due to the mass amount of money needed for production of this film. The movie had a production budget of only 1.8 million dollars and ended up making $25,504,513. The movie never won any big awards but was nominated for best horror film at the 1985 Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA.

The acting in this film is full of very mediocre performances including one from decorated movie star Johnny Depp, as this was his first film. The best acting performance of the movie comes from Robert Englund, who stars as Freddy Krueger. After watching the film, Englund uses his costume to full effect and takes over the film. He really makes it seem that there is pure evil flowing not through just Kreuger, but through Englund himself. This makes every scene of his extremely frightening.

This movie, although probably scary for its time, I did not find really scary. Although some scenes made me jump, there was no point where I wanted to turn the movie off due to the scariness. The main reason why this movie is scary is because Freddy kills people in their dreams. This idea turns a very regular horror figure into a very memorable one because everyone dreams.

The movie’s main market is definitely teenagers as all of the main characters besides Freddy are in high school. It is very relatable, as it makes it seem like this could actually happen to the teenage viewers. I would not say this movie is family friendly unless all the children are at least over 13. For children under the age of 13 I would not recommend this movie because young children find things more scary and are more prone to nightmares. There is also references and scenes referring to sex, paired with gore and mild cursing.

The setting did not play that big of an effect on the mood of the movie. It took place in what seemed like a regular town in a few regular houses. They did incorporate good camera angles and did a nice job of choosing when to have a close up on a certain character. One of the most famous pictures of this movie is the close up of Freddy Krueger.

Overall, I would give this movie a 2 out 5 rating. This movie was not dreadful but the old time special effects and mediocre acting, led me to boredom throughout the movie. A 2 out of 5 rating is like getting some bad when going trick or treating, as in a candy you do not like. My opinion is most likely different than that of someone who was born when this movie came out. For example Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 94% rating, which is very high.