Unexpectedly Original.

Rating: 9/10 (1 January 2005)

Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is an excellent horror film, mainly because it is so different from many horror movies. It's not a typical slasher movie, it's quite original and has some great moments.
It's about a group of teens who are plagued by scary dreams, primarily Nancy. When she has some friends over one night, Tina and Rod go into the bedroom and have sex while Nancy is left with Glen in the living room. But Tina is murdered brutally in the bedroom by an unseen force, and Rod becomes the prime suspect. But it wasn't him at all- it was a horribly burned boogeyman named Freddy Krueger who haunts people in their dreams and murders them. As the dreams the teens share become more and more disturbing, Nancy tries to stay awake as long as she can, and try to stop Freddy before he claims another victim.
This movie features Heather Langenkamp (scream queen of the series), Robert Englund (Urban Legend) as Freddy Krueger, and a very young Johnny Depp ("Pirates of the Carribbean", "Edward Scissorhands"). Wes Craven does a great job, as he always does, in creating an excellent movie that has some pretty good scare scenes. The whole dream scenario was extremely original had never been done before, so that's one thing that I really enjoyed about the movie. The sequels (while I've only seen a few) weren't nearly as good, and became more comic than scary, which ruined Freddy (for me at least). But this one was great, and Freddy is a perfect movie villain.
Overall, "A Nightmare On Elm Street" is one of the classic horror films of the 80's. It's not fully perfect, but it's close. Recommended to horror fans, there isn't another quite like it. 9/10.