A menagerie of creative kills and set-pieces, but not a classic.

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2019)

In typical horror movie fashion, the characters in this film are boooring. Heather Langenkamp does a good job developing Nancy as she goes through the grief and distress of the film, but the other performances are just fine, nothing more. Even Robert Englund's iconic Fred Krueger is just a hammy villain with goofy dialogue.
Fred's backstory is more interesting than Fred himself, and Marge's involvement with Fred's death is a nice reveal. Generally, the plot unfolds at a good pace and doesn't really slog at any point - the film opens with a nightmare, and soon after we see the first murder. The murders after that cross over with Nancy herself being haunted by Fred in some pretty creative (and visually compelling) nightmare sequences. I admire the way the film seamlessly and unpredictably blurs the line between dreams and reality, although the dream-within-a-dream ending stretches things and becomes incoherent.
While I don't like the silly nursery rhyme (in fact, horror movies making children's things creepy in general is just lazy), the film has a neat synth score. I wasn't blown away by the cinematography outside of specific set-piece moments (Fred looming over Nancy in bed, Tina appearing to Nancy in a bloodied body bag, the whole bathtub scene), and some of the special effects were lame but admittedly charming (mannequin Marge being dragged through the window, Fred's super-long arms). The revolving room effects sequences are deservedly iconic though.
There are some religious and sexual undertones to be found, but they're too vague and don't amount to much. The least a slasher movie can do though, no matter how boring the characters, is at least have fun and creative kills, and that's something this film has in spades.
6/10.