Craven had lots of fun making it, so we do watching it.

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2004)

Great, imaginative premise: Freddy Krueger comes to you in your dreams, and if you believe he's real, he can really hurt you, even kill you.
Executed in a fun way, with Johnny Depp in his first onscreen role, as one of the main characters, boyfriend to THE main character, in fact. He has quite a bit of screen time. If you're a Depp fan and haven't seen this, you'll love it. He's very young, 21 exactly.
Genre pictures which are self-referential, and don't take themselves too seriously, and are made by someone who loves the genre are always the most fun. This is why The Matrix Reloaded was one of the least fun sci-fi pics ever, and why The Matrix series was just asking to be spoofed in the worst way - there's not a single joke about the sci-fi genre in it, or a single moment where it doesn't take itself seriously.
Nightmare on Elm Street does not compete with most "serious" movies due to its incomparably bad acting (with the exception of Johnny Depp, who even at 21 captured the half-serious tone here), but in this case these unconvincing performances actually benefit the movie by drawing attention to the fact that this is only a movie, and further allowing the audience to enjoy and have fun with it. I was thinking, while watching it for the second time that if the performances WERE incredibly convincing, Nightmare on Elm Street would be rather unpleasant to watch. If you REALLY thought these teenagers were dying, and the central character was REALLY having to deal with their deaths, then it wouldn't be as fun. In an interview on the Scream DVD, Wes Craven says: "People don't go to scary movies to be scared, they go to them to have fun." The fact that he thinks this is what makes his horror movies the most fun. I sometimes wonder whether he'll be known for anything other than Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. I hope he does give us something new and original, but if not, he has at least started two great fun modern horror series (even if their sequels are mostly garbage).