Since I was young, I always loved Freddy. Not only was he this supernatural half-Wolverine, but he was so jovial about it all. The levity of it allowed to me to enjoy the movies more, not only to myself, but with a wider audience.
So, I sat down one day and just watched all of the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks, from the ’84 original to the critically panned remake. The hardest thing to do when watching the movie was to remind myself I wasn’t grading the film, but the Freddy that existed inside the film.
Without any further ado, here is my humble opinion on the order of best to worst Freddy Krueger.
Related:
Best - Worst: Freddy Krueger
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#1
A Nightmare on Elm Street: This is just such a classic. From the first moment we see Freddy running down the alley with his silly yet disturbing accordion arms, to the infamous hand in the bathtub, to the last jump scare with Freddy pulling Marge Thompson through that little bitty door window. We get his infamous backstory, we get the creepy child Freddy lullaby, and we get one of my all time favorite Freddy lines (delivered with such gleeful malevolence) “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy!” But the icing on the cake is Johnny Depp getting sucked into the mattress and coming back out as gallons and gallons of blood. Still one of the best kills in the franchise.
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#2
Wes Craven's New Nightmare: Wes Craven, back on the scene. With it he breathes new life into the series and New Nightmare ends up being one of the strongest entries in the series. We get Robert Englund in a long overdue overhaul of the classic costume (which I really enjoy) and the makeup is fine tuned and tightened up. New Nightmare not only changed Freddy’s costume back but also brought him back from the edge of being far too cartoony and tweaking him back into the horror icon from the first few entries that we truly love. The entire meta quality of the movie definitely plays in it’s favor and just ends up making Freddy that much more terrifying by purely existing in this “real” world. You can tell Englund loves being the truly scary Krueger and getting to back away from the audacious over the top Freddy that dominated the two movies prior to this.
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#3
A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is when we really get to see Freddy in full modern form he’s known as today. Where the original is great, Dream Warriors is when we start getting the really creative kills and the ridiculously so-bad-it’s-good one liners. Whenever I talk to anyone about the Freddy flicks, everyone seems to remember this one, whether it’s the marionette strings suicide scene or the head in the television with the ever memorable “welcome to the prime time, bitch!” With a Franke Darabont-written script based on a Craven draft, this one rides the line excellently between silly and scary.
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#4
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master: Here we see Freddy come back from the dead. And he’s pissed. He makes quick work of the male remnants from Dream Warriors with some boring kills but some killer lines: “now this is what I call a wet dream!” Like Dream Warriors, Dream Master did a good job at balancing the horror and the comedy, we see Freddy’s disgusting burned body full of his souls but then a pretty hilarious postcard with the welcoming “Greetings from Hell!” Englund pretty much kills all of his time on screen, laughing his way through the movie while turning teenagers into cockroaches. Also, Englund has it a little tougher than the guys playing our favorite mute killers. He has to show so much emotion and in Dream Master he really shows his chops in classical training, ranging from truly surprised and frightened to intimidating and cocky.
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#5
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): This movie is often critically panned and it definitely has its merits for being so despised by Nightmare fans. Micro naps? Freddy is a rapist? Yeah. These weren’t decisions that sat well with the general audience or long term fans. But was Jackie Earle Haley a hell of a Freddy? Absolutely. His more ghastly appearance, his tattered reiteration of the classic costume, and delivering some tongue-in-cheek lines with no hint of smiles but pure instead malevolence. Haley gives the long time fan a glimpse at what the series could have been if they had strayed a different direction. It’s nearly impossible to replace Englund but Haley wasn’t trying to, he was just giving a performance as a different interpretation of the character. Remember, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
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#6
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child: Boy, oh boy. Like Ryan mentioned in his Jason breakdown, sometimes you get to a point in the franchise when things start getting a little too cartoony. They are just a little too outlandish and you kind of have to roll your eyes and groan and stick it out. Exhibit A: The malformed giant headed Freddy baby that chases the lead through an abandoned church in the beginning of the film. Exhibit B: The eat-until-you-burst kill and the lame motorcycle transformation. Also, numerous parts of this movie seem to break the rules clearly established. Freddy gets you when you’re asleep. So Greta was asleep at the dinner table? Dan was asleep at the wheel after being in a mad rush to see Alice? Oh. Right. HER BABY IS DREAMING AND CAN JUST MAGICALLY ATTACK ALL OF THEM FOR SOME REASON BECAUSE OF THAT BACKWARDS LOGIC. Anyone remember Super Freddy? Yeah. Don’t. This movie was the first part of a really horrible one-two combo of almost unbearable Freddy flicks.
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#7
Freddy vs. Jason: Now, I have a strange affinity for this movie because it’s the first rated R movie I ever saw in theaters. That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize its weaknesses. While Englund has never looked better as Freddy (it’s great to see him in HD), this movie goes from bad to really bad once Freddy and Jason have a full blown battle royale in his boiler room. It’s not so strange to see Jason lumbering around and trying to kill Freddy, the weird part is Freddy hopping around like some sort of acrobatic ninja, mixing real world and dreamworld moves. But at least that can be explained by them existing in the dream realm. When it gets really out of control is when Freddy is pulled into the real world and is still an expertly trained MMA caliber fighter. Most of the screen time we get with Freddy is dominated by overly choreographed fight scenes and a really horrible CG worm monster. What a waste.
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#8
Freddy's Dead: Thank goodness the franchise didn’t end on this low note like it was originally intended to. Within the first five minutes of this movie we see Freddy dressed as a witch and full-on riding a broomstick. The entire ridiculous plot aside, this movie plunged head first into ridiculous territory. In fact, Freddy wears a number of ridiculous costumes and his one liners go flat at least ninety percent of the time. AT LEAST. His motive is a “jump the shark” moment that could have destroyed the franchise and his kills are dated and clunky. It’s all so cartoony, a full scene done in silence including Freddy mock shushing the crowd like a Looney Toon. Englund can only do so much with what’s written but this movie is laughably bad. How bad, you ask? Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr are in it. He isn’t a horror icon in Freddy’s Dead, he’s a schlocky street performing clown. And don’t forget the Power Glove!
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#9
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge: After the events of the first movie, Freddy decides to possess and utilize a human form to do his killing instead of doing so himself. So, essentially, in half of this movie Freddy is by proxy this ultra wimp Jesse who has the most primordial feminine scream that has ever been heard, has the most obnoxiously amazing dance scene arguably in '80s history, and rocks tightie whities about ten more minutes longer than anyone ever should. For over the first half of the movie, we rarely see Krueger, who instead is lashing out using Jesse as his mortal tool. When he does show, he does some neat stuff, like pull back the skin on his head to reveal a mucusy pulsing brain but everything cool he does it completely nixed when he explodes out of the ground at a pool party and runs around like an idiot. The worst part of it all is that he makes almost no one liners and instead switches his trademark wit for a maniacal laugh that would make a '70s cartoon supervillain cringe. Realistically, this movie should have been called "I Was a Teenage Krueger." The make-up is bad, the kills are unimaginative, this Freddy is a total dud.
