The most beautiful horror nightmare available

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2007)

A classic that will have a long line of descendants. All the necessary elements are there to make a blockbusting horror film, a phenomenal scary movie. It concerns teenagers that are definitely in between desire and sex, both creating and nourishing in them fear and insecurity. The main characters are girls who are even more insecure and more fragile in their sexual phantasms and fears. Then the film systematically blurs the limits between reality and dream, reality and nightmare. It is one fundamental human fear that has been with humanity since the first homo sapiens ever appeared on this earth : the fear that what you imagine or just plain see in your mind may be just as real, even if virtual, as reality. Virtual reality is the other side of the living coin and it is so simple to toss it over. Then you get into smaller elements like underground airless and light-less corridors. Nerverending furnaces that leak and steam around. Snakes, bugs and other creepy crawly monsters. Then the film can center its focusing eye onto the essential element that is going to shine bright on the background of fearful and frightening people and objects. It is the four long razor sharp metallic claws or nails that this Fred Krueger wears on his right hand. This handful of claws, this handful of expanded and deadly nails is the ultimate fear in itself : the hand that can crush you, choke you, strangle you, seize you, grab you, etc. The claws that can tear, cut, scratch, perforate, and do so many other actions. Then you just have to add some blood, some metallic shine, some rust, and some sharp sound and the trap is ready and your soul can fall in the hole and it does at the bottom of a bathtub or in the middle of a bed. Then the film is a never-ending story. It is when you think you have vanquished and gotten rid of your worst fear that it reappears and promises you a new episode round the corner of the very first street you will cross. And you may find out that your own mother, with a little help of her friend, the hard liquor bottle, is the very accomplice of this frightening monster, bogeyman, tommy-knocker that will come back, that's a promise. This first film in this long series of seven is the very archetype of what a nightmare fantasy can be. It is a masterpiece and you will be shaking with anticipation till you can watch the next one.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne