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My Ranking of the A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie Franchise

I was super late to the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

I was aware of them since I was a little kid and knew who Freddy Krueger and Robert Englund was, but I was not a horror fan growing up.

But in more recent times, I have become a fan and I started watching these movies in 2022.

Yeah I’m a late bloomer on these movies.

But I love them now.

This franchise is very good.  It’s hard to rank these because I enjoy all of them (even the remake of the original).

However, I’m going to rank them on this post.

Here it goes:

  1. A Nightmare on Elm Street-The original.  The best.  The template.  I loved it on first watch.  All the characters and actors are great.  Great story.  It has everything it needs to be great.  When I first saw this, I thought wow this is going to be hard to top.  Again, I like all of these, but this is number one period.
  2. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:  Freddy’s Revenge-A lot of people seem to hate this movie but I love it.  Again like the first one, I love all the actors and characters.  Great story.  I don’t see what’s wrong with it.
  3. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4:  The Dream Master-I like 3 but this one for me is better, in my opinion.  I know I’m repeating myself, but I love the cast and characters.  Everyone was cast well and the story is great.  I love all of Freddy’s kills in all of these movies.  I know he’s an evil character, but you forget that because he’s always cracking jokes and has a super over the top way of killing someone.  These movies I always thought were scary, but I think they’re a lot of fun to watch now.
  4. Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare-This is the 7th Nightmare on Elm Street movie and I think one of the best.  Creator Wes Craven returns to write and direct this one and it is so well done.  It’s really more like a Twilight Zone or Tales From The Crypt type of episode, but it’s a Freddy Krueger movie.  Excellent story.
  5. Freddy vs. Jason-This is really more of a separate movie, but since Freddy is a big part of it, it still deserves to be on this list.  This is a ton of fun.  It’s a pure popcorn movie.  I love it.
  6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5:  The Dream Child-Very good sequel to the 4th movie.  Again, apparently this is not one of the popular ones, but I enjoy it.
  7. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:  The Dream Warriors-One of the big fan favorites, and I like it for sure, but I just like the ones listed above more.
  8. Freddy’s Dead:  The Final Nightmare-This is the next to last one ranked but it’s not because I hate it.  I really like it actually.  But again, I just like the others more.
  9. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)-The remake of the original.  I avoided this one for quite awhile because Robert Englund does not play Freddy in it, but once I gave it a chance, I thought it was pretty good, and a little bit different than the original, which I appreciate.  I hate remakes, but if they’re done a bit differently, I can respect them.  So I actually do like this one.  Everyone did a good job with it.

Well that’s my ranking of this great movie franchise.  I truly do like them all very much, so even the ones ranked lowest I don’t hate by any means.  This is a great franchise and I’m so glad I finally gave these movies a chance.

How would you rank these?  Thoughts?

The Ardent Fan

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  • Since we both decided to rank these movies, Lucas asked that I also comment with my list.

    Nightmare on Elm Street

    Nightmare on Elm St (84)
    Nightmare on Elm St 3: Dream Warriors
    Nightmare on Elm St 4: The Dream Master
    Freddy vs Jason
    A Nightmare on Elm St (2010)
    Nightmare on Elm St 2: Freddy’s Revenge
    Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
    Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
    Nightmare on Elm St 5: The Dream Child

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The Ardent Fan
2 years ago

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