Wes Craven ingeniously pulls off a seminal horror movie amidst the endless flood of early 80s slasher madness that still stands out thirty years later.

Rating: Null/10 (17 June 2014)

CONTAINS SPOILER! READ ONLY IF YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE!
If you want to watch a good movie, go back to the classics. Apart from the 80s cheesiness that might at first make nowadays teenagers uncomfortable, A Nightmare on Elm Street hasn't aged much.
Wes Craven ingeniously pulls off a seminal horror movie amidst the endless flood of early 80s slasher madness that still stands out thirty years later. Faithful to it's slasher genre with surprising, gruesome deaths it however has something more: a script that goes the distance. The primary strength of the film is the intellectual involvement of the audience, we are not just trying to guess who's next, we are trying to solve the mystery along with the heroine Nancy Thompson (Heather Lagenkamp) and are constantly on the edge of our seats. The blurred lines between reality and fantasy are precisely crafted to deeply emerge the audience in the story and warp expectations. At times we think it's a nightmare when it turns out to be reality, and vice versa, and sometimes nightmares become reality, those are very conscious directorial choices putting the audience in the same state of fear as the main protagonist, with no where to escape.
Even though the nightmare scenes become slightly redundant and less imaginative after the spectacular bathtub one, the visual and practical effects, unlike many CGI nowadays, are still very disturbing. I've always thought that human created creatures and practical effects were somehow more repulsive than CGI ones even if they're low budget and look fake, they are more organic, more palpable, more terrifying. I don't know about you, but when I imagine the boogie man he looks much more like Seth Brundle as the fly (The Fly, David Cronenberg, 1986) than the spider in Big Ass Spider! (Mike Mendez, 2013). But the true strength that makes Freddy Krueger much more terrifying than his robotic psycho villain counterparts Jason and Michael Myers, is his personality exhibited throughout the movie as a sadistic but yet playful child murderer, unashamed of his one liners: "I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy."
As for the cast, Tina Grey (Amanda Wyss) is perfect as the Janet Leigh of the film, she even brings some sort of unexpected class to the genre, her death, shown from the reality part of her nightmare, is the most horrifying scene of the movie. Nancy, the typical teenager, is not just another scream queen, she's also resourceful and courageous and makes it easy for the audience to suspend their disbelief. The boys, Nick Corri and Glen Lantz (Jsu Garcia and Johnny Depp) of course have minor parts but are nonetheless convincing, and Glen's death, which comes in the last act of the movie, competes with Tina's as one of the most unforgettably gruesome scenes, coming as a shock after the much more ordinary death-by- hanging of Corri. The adults are much weaker characters than the teenagers and their acting is so caricatured it makes us chuckle, although Ronee Blakely (Nancy's mom) is very efficient in the exposition scene explaining Kruger's origins and I also loved the sleep clinic sequence, alas all of her other scenes are over the top and unconvincing; John Saxon (Nancy's dad), in spite of being too dramatic, still manages to portray a strong but frustrated parental figure.
And of course, Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund), fully scared in his striped sweater, harboring his iconic razor glove, manages a visceral performance which reminds each of us of the monster that haunts our nightmares, whatever form it may take, the one we think we finally got rid of but yet might still be lingering somewhere waiting for his comeback. With the marvelous creation of this character, Wes Craven reinforces the fear of sleep, proving that a horror movie doesn't have to lobotomize it's audience to be truly frightening.
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