’80s Movie Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street, a classic or canceled?

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a horror movie classic, the character Freddy Kruger is one of the most talked-about killers in the horror movie world. Coming from the ’80s, which in my opinion is one of the best decades with some of the best movies.

Surprisingly, I don’t hear much about Freddy Kruger anymore. These movies were made before the 2000s and are probably getting lost in time. I wanted to watch this movie to see if it holds up and if people should start talking about it again.

What’s it’s about:

At the start of the movie, we learn that Freddy Kruger was a serial killer. We’re not sure why, but he shows up in children’s dreams and attacks them and their families. These nightmares come to life and these kids get stuck in a killing loop. We’re not sure how he’s doing this yet, but Nancy, the protagonist, is having these nightmares and wants to put a stop to Freddy Kruger. Slowly she starts figuring out how to end these terrifying nightmares to save herself, her family, and her friends.

Nancy tells her friends Glen and Rod about these nightmares and they don’t believe her.  This is a super common thing throughout the entire movie, with people ignoring obviously concerning things. Especially when  Nancy was trying to tell her parents about her nightmares, they just kept writing it off as her being “crazy,” they knew she had sleep deprivation and was waking up with bruises on her arm.

Many of the death scenes had a lot of gore; there were crazy amounts of blood in these scenes. The amount of gore throughout the movie was unbelievable.  Props to them for those scenes; I’ll definitely be having nightmares about them for a while. 

The infamous Freddy Kruger is not seen very much throughout the entire movie. This gave me an eerie feeling when watching. My favorite reference to him is the Freddy Kruger nursery rhyme. They do sing this towards the end of the movie. His FX makeup was very cool, gory at times, but still super cool. 

My Concerns:

One thing that I did not think held up about this movie is the intimate scene at the beginning of the movie. The actors in this film were playing 15-year-olds. Though they were all above the age of 18, it’s a bit confusing why this scene was needed when these actors were playing as minors. Things like this don’t get talked about enough, especially when it’s an older movie. This kind of scene is very concerning and often looked past by viewers.

Overall Thoughts:

A Nightmare on Elm Street isn’t a bad movie. It was pretty entertaining and, at some points, a good laugh seeing how ridiculous some things were. Looking back on older things can give us good insight into today’s world and society’s growth. If I had to rate this movie, I would give it a 6/10. Overall, this is an interesting movie, it has its downsides but if you just want to enjoy a classic horror movie then I would go ahead and watch it.