Decent but not as wonderful as its reputation

Rating: 5/10 (30 August 2014)

Freddy was a serial killer targeting younger kids until the parents in town killed him. Now he's haunting teens in town... in their nightmares. He's killing them and it's up to a couple of 'em to stop him beyond the grave, once and for all.
This movie has great but unmemorable soundtrack, decent acting and a creepy plot, making for a good horror film. But it is a little confusing, the teenagers are typical and boring suburbs kids and the film just wasn't as good as its reputation. It is the first film to come to mind for a lot of slasher fans, and for teens often the first horror film they watch in life, so its high rating may be from nostalgia. My favorite movie is the 1981 film My Bloody Valentine, I'll get a lot of people who disagree but I like it more than this movie. NOES just doesn't seem as great as it is believed to be, it isn't bad but isn't amazing, either.
Somehow it ended up with several sequels and a remake, none of which I've bothered to watch. The main reason I watched NOEM is because whenever I say to my friends that I love movies, they always bring up the horror films The Ring (2002), Resident Evil (2002), Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I don't know, maybe I missed something? The Freddy character is certainly not scary with his funny and ugly sweater and Edward Scissorhands knives, although his face makeup is excellent. The parents were all overdramatic and strange, as well as totally oblivious to what was going on although they did act suspicious. In My Bloody Valentine the entire film had amazingly dreary scenery from the small Canadian town of Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. It also had an amazing (sadly unreleased) soundtrack score by Paul Zaza that I'll never forget and great acting from most characters. NOES has very little if no scenery, just boring houses and a boring school, nothing that stands out. The soundtrack is dull and repetitive although good for the first few moments of it. The acting was bad, yes, even from Johnny Depp. Without these elements a movie is pretty pathetic.
Overall it just wasn't the big thrill-ride it's depicted as by reviewers. I'm not saying it was a bad movie, far from it. All I'm saying is that it was pretty average and not very original. Freddy was cool but looked like he was the product of the McDonald's Hamburglar and Edward Scissorhands conceiving a baby together. Like in Stephen King's IT, he provides horrible nightmares and can alter reality with his supernatural powers. I'm not really sure how he's considered a slasher character, yes he kills people, but so do zombies, vampires and werewolves. Slasher movie killers are most often humans, living humans who use weapons rather than sci-fi style powers to do their murders. He had a voice like Beetlejuice or Pennywise the Clown and as far as scary goes, I've seen worse. To be fair, he's no rip-off, Alexa the chemist woman from the 2002 slasher movie Death Factory ripped him off with her knife-hands, they're exactly like his. But I've seen movies so much better than this one, it's very hard to understand how it got such a high rating.