A little originality goes a long way

Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2004)

In 1984, there were several serial-killer flicks in which some unknown loser with a grudge murdered a long list of people who had other things in their lives to focus on. The Halloween franchise was up to a couple of episodes, and Friday The 13th was about to film what was purportedly its final chapter. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was in the midst of adding sequels, even. So what separates A Nightmare On Elm Street from an overcrowded market?
In a nutshell, Wes Craven takes a clichéd story and adds a fantasy element that makes the whole thing more plausible than any of its sequels have ever achieved. How he achieves this is simple. Instead of making the story about his villain, he focuses on one of the potential victims and their struggle to deal with some extremely unusual events. Everyone over the age of eighteen probably has a high school friend who died in unusual, tragic, or even violent circumstances, and that is the hook Craven uses to put the viewer into the film. Human drama will always win out over special effects and simulated violence.
Where it begins to undo itself is that Nancy is the only character with more than one dimension. The cop hates teenagers because they're teenagers, the mother is a drunk for reasons we're still guessing at, and the teens who struggle against the villain are distinguishable only by how much the cop hates them. The villain is the one character who gets anything resembling a back-story, and his total screen time is little more than a third of the total feature.
The special effects budget on the film was minimal, so the makers had to be a little more creative with how they shocked the viewer. Trick shots or cheated shots feature very heavily in this episode. This is a very good thing, as they are far more convincing than the myriad of expensive special effects that have followed, particularly in later sequels. The latest crossover episode in particular is bad in this regard. All the gloss and shine of Hollywood virtually leaps out in latter episodes, but none of the dramatic tension that exists here is even suggested later in the series.
Overall, this is a five out of ten effort, but don't let that fool you. This is a textbook example of how much of an improvement a different idea can bring. In a film school, this would make a great example of how an active mind is far more important than financing.