The original!

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2001)

I didn't particularly care all that much for Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" when I first saw it. But then came all the sequels. Parts 2-6 (unless you count 1994's "A New Nightmare", which was really a different kind of movie compared to the first six films in the series) made the original look better with each passing movie. Now this stands out as a cult classic. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is the scary story which introduced the world to Freddy Krueger, the killer with knives for fingers who can enter the dreams of teenagers and kill them via their dreams. This is the movie in the series that scares me the most because it's also the most serious movie of the bunch. Freddy Krueger became more wisecracking in the sequels and therefore were less interesting. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" has alot of thrills and scares, and some good performances (Johnny Depp made his film debut here). But the real star here is Craven, who not only directed "A Nightmare on Elm Street" but also wrote the script. He created a monster that ranks right up there with earlier classic slasher killers such as Michael Myers ("Halloween"), Jason Voorhees ("Friday the 13th"), and Leatherface ("Texas Chainsaw Massacre"). While "A Nightmare on Elm Street" isn't as effective as "Halloween" or Craven's own '90s smash "Scream", it's still an effective little horror thriller.
*** (out of four)