A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie Review

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror movie released in 1984. A classic horror movie with horror icon star, Robert Englund, as the icon Freddy Krueger. We have all heard the nursery rhyme “1,2 Freddy is coming for you…” as kids. The nursery rhyme may have been heard in a YouTube video. In a way a lot of people have heard the nursery rhyme. It came from this hit movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street is about Nancy, Tina, Rod, and Glen all having similar dreams of a burnt-faced man wearing a red and green sweater. On one of his hands he wears a glove with finger blade knives. He comes after them in their dreams, but once Tina is the first to die everyone starts to die one by one leaving Nancy as our final girl.

A little backstory on how I found this movie was when I just recently watched my first horror movie, Child’s Play. The movie came on that same month and I decided to watch it because Child’s Play was not scary. I watched the movie and was scared of it. I decided to stop watching horror movies for a while because the thought of somebody being able to kill you in your dreams was such a scary concept. I did later on have a dream with Freddy in it. He was chasing me and sliced my arm. I woke up to having three cuts on my arm from his glove. Just proves how much of an impact the movie made on me as a kid. When looking into the movie there is a story that pops up about a boy who died while in his sleep. This story is allegedly a reason as to what the movie could be based off on.

The movie has many great moments from the opening scene to a few great moments I personally enjoyed. The opening scene with Tina being hunted down by some one in a boiler room to her waking up being scared. You never see who the person is, but Nancy and Glen have seen the same figure better than Tina. My favorite scenes in the movie happen in the beginning of the movie. One is where Freddy is just coming out of the wall above Nancy in Tina’s room and when Tina is rolled around the room as Freddy is killing her. I saw a video about how they filmed the scene with Tina and they used a room that would roll around. In the moments we see Tina on the wall and ceiling the room was rotating in a circle. It was dangerous, but Wes Craven made sure for her to be safe while the stunt was going on.

The characters in the movie were likable and felt real to me. The trope of not some over the top teenagers, but just sleep deprived scared teenagers. Anyone would be that way if you haven’t slept for days or just entering a fight or flight mode. Any moment Nancy would fall asleep, Freddy would just be ready to come after Nancy. As someone who watches the movie, it builds upon that fear of how vulnerable Nancy is. How can the characters truly stop something that is in the mind? Sleep is not an option in this movie. Lastly, the climax in the movie of our final girl battling the monster. Nancy is brave and facing her fears against Freddy once he is in her world. The ending can be made ambiguous and I believe that could be the goal. It is up to your interpretation to how you believe the movie truly ended.

Robert Englund became my favorite horror movie icon after this movie because it was the second movie to truly scare me. I look for that in horror movies. The movie may not be scary to people now, but as a kid it just did something I believe could never happen. If you are starting out with horror please give this movie a shot. I just recently watched it on Netflix and just enjoyed the time of reliving a good movie. With everything going on with Johnny Depp, if you are a fan of him then this movie is a good watch for his fans.