"A Nightmare on Elm Street"- While not quite as flawless as you might remember, it's still a wonderful and creative take on the slasher-film genre.

Rating: 9/10 (29 October 2016)

The world lost one of the great forces in filmmaking with the tragic death of Wes Craven in 2015. A mastermind of chills and suspense, Craven repeatedly changed the face of horror throughout his decades- long career. Redefining it many times and demonstrating a skill and class that set him apart in a league of his own. The world may very well never again see another with as fine and complex a view as his own and he will be sorely missed by the filmgoing community.
One of his most well-known and widely beloved works is also one of his most innovative. The 1984 supernatural slasher-flick "A Nightmare on Elm Street." While perhaps best remembered as the film that introduced audiences to the wildly popular cinematic boogeyman Freddy Krueger, the film itself is an accomplished and complex piece of horror storytelling, and it stands tall as a very good and fundamentally solid piece of entertainment. And while it may be a bit shaky around the edges, and does have its share of flaws that some more hardcore fans either cannot or will not admit to seeing, it's still very much well-worth seeking out for fans of spooky stories and quality cinema.
A group of teen-aged friends discover that amongst them, several have been experiencing eerily similar dreams about a man with knives on his fingers and terrible burns covering his face. When one is suddenly killed by a seemingly invisible force in her sleep, the rest are rocked to the core, and decide they must try to figure out just what happened to their friend. Soon enough however, they discover that they're the targets of a deadly, supernatural force that seems to only exist within their dreams- the vengeful spirit of a man known as "Fred Krueger", who has the ability to kill them in real life should he capture and dispatch of them in their sleep. And so we follow our lead heroine Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and the others as they attempt to thwart the dark fate that Krueger has planned for them.
The film's biggest benefit lies in just how creative and innovative its concept is. The idea of a killer that stalks his victims in their dreams promises limitless potential, and it's here that Craven really excels. The film is visually arresting, and has a wicked sense of style and tone. From the dastardly images of Krueger mutilating himself only to instantly heal, to the appearance of things that simply cannot occur in the real world, it helps create a haunting and unique environment of dread, and really builds up the atmosphere and in a wonderful way. In addition to his wonderful direction, Craven's script is very sharp, concise and has a great sense of pacing, so there's never a dull moment and every scene counts towards the overall narrative and the continued development of the characters. Craven really does knock it out of the park here.
Robert Englund tackles the role of Krueger for the first time here, and he's simply a revelation. He is one of the best cinematic bad- guys to emerge from the decade, and seems to relish in being a twisted and devilish freak of the supernatural. It's frankly shocking that the studio-suits behind the scenes even thought for one second they could recast him in follow-ups (which they tried and failed to do), as Englung simply IS Freddy. I also gotta give big points to this film for being one of the earliest to feature future superstar Johnny Depp as Glenn, one of our lead protagonists. He's by far the best of the lead cast members (outside of Englund, of course) and he makes for a really sweet, fun and compelling hero to follow. John Saxon also stands out in a very fun supporting role as the father of Langenkamp's Nancy. He's just gruff-yet-supportive enough as a troubled father that you'll want to root for despite being a bit of a jerk at times.
However, the film does very much have a set of flaws that I believe hold it back from absolute perfection. Flaws that I think many in the horror community commonly ignore or excuse too often. And while they are not a deal-breaker in any sense, I do feel I need to subtract a single point for them. To start, outside of Englund, Depp and Saxon, the rest of the cast is very troubled. Particularly Langenkamp's Nancy. While you do inherently like and root for her as a character, Langenkamp isn't believable in any real sense as a teenager haunted by her circumstances. While she did a decent job in some of her later work (including several other films in the series), I do think she was miscast here. Even for the time, some of the scares were pretty weak as well, which robs a lot of the atmosphere during a few key moments. And there's one particularly troubling sequence in the third act that is so ridiculous, it's almost impossible to take it seriously. (While I won't spoil anything, I will give a subtle hint: There's no way all that happened in only 20 minutes.)
Despite those flaws however, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is still very much a horror classic that stands the test of time even thirty years later. It's creative concept still chills to the bone. It's lead villain is still an icon of horror that is feared by audiences even to this day. And it's still a great bit of eerie fun to behold. Despite hit-and-miss follow-ups and spin-offs and an atrocious reboot that came out a few years back, Wes Craven's iconic original still holds up.
I give it a near-perfect 9 out of 10.