A Nightmare on Elm Street Movies Ranked: Worst to Best

Freddy has survived fire, holy water and several endings that were apparently more of a suggestion. The 2010 remake does what all those teenagers couldn’t: it makes us want him to go away. Samuel Bayer’s version has the hat, the glove and familiar scenes, but the Guys found very little of the personality that made the original stick.

There are a few things worth rescuing from the furnace. The discussion gives the micro-nap idea some credit, and Jackie Earle Haley’s little movements with the glove offer flashes of menace. Don also finds a handful of effective death-scene moments and appreciates the callbacks to other entries. Unfortunately, those scraps are doing a lot of overtime.

Jon tries to judge the remake as if he had never seen the 1984 film, but keeps running into forgettable characters and an ugly tone that leaves him checking his watch. The expanded abuse backstory makes the experience more unpleasant without making it more compelling to him. And when a practical wall effect from the original feels more convincing than its digital replacement, the upgrade argument starts looking pretty thin.

Don and Jon both land at 0.50. No split decision. No nostalgic rescue. Just two Freddy fans pointing toward the exit. Freddy’s worst nightmare turns out to be a movie that makes his audience wish there wouldn’t be another one.

For something called The Final Nightmare, this feels awfully casual about saying goodbye. Freddy gets a video-game sequence, a family-history detour and dream demons that Jon compares to rejected Muppets. The knives are still there. The edge has wandered off somewhere with the screenplay.

Jon’s affection for Robert Englund survives the experience. His affection for this particular movie does not. A few one-liners amuse him, but the cast feels forgettable and the finale barely connects to the series he loves. It’s supposed to be a sendoff. To Jon, it feels more like someone remembered they still had a Freddy costume and a release date.

Don gets a little more out of the third act. He likes the idea of Freddy’s daughter becoming the protagonist, finds something worthwhile in the backstory and appreciates the score’s nods to earlier movies. He even thinks this feels more like an Elm Street entry than The Dream Child. That is not quite a ringing endorsement after his assessment of the opening two acts.

They meet at 1.25, despite taking different routes through the wreckage. Don can find an idea worth defending. Jon sees the bottom of the original run. Neither thinks the remaining jokes are enough to make this the farewell Freddy deserved. When your supposedly final bow leaves the fans eager for someone to come back and fix it, you may have missed the landing.

Apparently, killing teenagers in their own dreams wasn’t complicated enough. The Dream Child adds an unborn baby’s dream world, more Amanda Krueger mythology and a finale that leaves us wondering whether anyone actually defeated Freddy or just shut a door on him for a few minutes. Someone get this franchise a diagram. And maybe a nap.

Don has very little patience left. The characters don’t work for him, the deaths disappoint him and the whole thing feels rushed. After The Dream Master, this is a particularly frustrating step down. His 0.75 isn’t an accidental slip of the glove. He spends the episode explaining exactly why this is his least favorite of the original series.

Jon is more forgiving at 2.25. He likes the idea of using the baby’s dreams and welcomes Alice back, even though he prefers her previous outing. But the one-liners don’t land the way he wants, the small number of deaths feels over-edited and the final defeat barely feels like a defeat. The impossible staircases offer something interesting to look at; they don’t magically build a satisfying ending.

That disagreement produces a recorded 1.50 average. There are pieces of a stranger, more ambitious nightmare here, but they never settle into a movie either host is eager to defend as a whole. Freddy has become a little too pleased with his own act, and the material isn’t keeping up. Congratulations. It’s a disappointment.

The first sequel has a problem before Freddy even gets to the pool party: we’re not sure we’re playing by the same rules anymore. Freddy’s Revenge turns the dream stalker into a possession story, pushes Jesse Walsh into the center and spends a lot of time making the Guys ask how any of this is supposed to work.

Jon gives Mark Patton credit and makes an important distinction in the discussion: the film’s queer subtext isn’t his problem with it. The writing is. The cast has to wrestle with a story that keeps bending Freddy’s powers to fit the next scene. Jon even offers a way to make sense of it as an extended nightmare, with Freddy feeding on Jesse’s fear. That’s his interpretation, not an explanation the film neatly provides. Sometimes being a fan means doing your own repairs.

Don’s 2.00 reflects a movie that has improved a little for him with time, but the absence of the original theme still bothers him. Jon also gives it 2.00. Their matching scores give this sequel a 2.00 average.

The 2.00 average keeps this ahead of the bottom three. It has an unusual identity and a central performance worth discussing, but the Guys spend more time trying to untangle its nightmare logic than being frightened by it. Freddy may have found a new body. We would have settled for a more consistent script.

Freddy has discovered that he’s the star, and The Dream Master lets him enjoy it. This is a louder, flashier nightmare with inventive kills, a new heroine and very little interest in letting the surviving Dream Warriors settle into a comfortable retirement. If you were attached to Kincaid and Joey, the movie has some extremely rude news.

Don enjoys the familiar ingredients: the theme, the dream imagery, the characters and practical effects. The more talkative Freddy isn’t his favorite version, but the movie moves well enough for him to give it 3.75. He can still recognize the series he loves beneath the extra showmanship.

Jon lands at 3.25. Lisa Wilcox’s Alice is his standout, and Englund delivers the one-liners and elaborate nightmare business. But replacing Patricia Arquette with Tuesday Knight doesn’t work as well for him, Dan fails to make much of an impression and the returning survivors are dispatched far too quickly. Jon would happily trade some of the new characters’ screen time for more Kincaid and Joey. The movie also gets a much cooler reception from guest Elyse, whose 1.50 reflects her frustration with Kristen’s early exit and the rushed character development.

Don and Jon’s average is 3.50. That puts The Dream Master right in the middle: entertaining, imaginative and unmistakably Freddy, even when the people around him deserve more room to breathe. The effects are doing excellent work. The franchise’s employee-retention policy could use a meeting.

How do you follow Freddy’s Dead? Bring back the man who created him and let him ask a much better question. What happens when the nightmare stops respecting the boundary between a movie and the people making it? New Nightmare takes Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund and Wes Craven himself and lets the fiction start eating into their world. Finally, a fresh reason to lose sleep.

Jon loves the ambition. This is a much more interesting way to revisit Freddy than inventing another batch of teenagers for him to work through. He praises Langenkamp and Englund, welcomes John Saxon back and puts the movie comfortably among his top Freddy entries. His reservations are real, though: the early stretch drags, the redesign isn’t his favorite and he misses some of the dark humor.

Don buys into the concept and the performances. The familiar theme and callbacks help the experiment still feel like an Elm Street movie, even as it steps outside the usual formula. Guest Elyse also gives it 4.50, with particular affection for Nancy’s return. Don and Jon’s matching 4.50s put New Nightmare in third place.

It’s a return that finds something worthwhile to say about why this monster keeps coming back. Freddy feels threatening again because the movie takes him seriously enough to change the rules with purpose. After the previous entry’s exhausted goodbye, this is the comeback the franchise needed. Apparently, the most effective weapon against a bad sequel is Wes Craven.

This is what happens when an Elm Street sequel remembers why we came and then gives Freddy somebody worth fighting. Nancy returns. The dream world gets bigger. The kids can do more than run down a hallway and wait for a punchline. Dream Warriors takes the original nightmare and turns it into a team effort, complete with powers, personalities and a song that Don and Jon are absolutely not embarrassed to have on their playlists.

Don loves the way the movie balances a frightening Freddy with the vicious showman he becomes. The characters work, the music works and the connection to Nancy and her father gives the sequel a reason to exist beyond another body count. It feels connected to the first film while opening up something new.

For Jon, this is the franchise getting back on track after Freddy’s Revenge. Patricia Arquette gives Kristen heart and vulnerability, Langenkamp’s return matters and Englund finds that sweet spot between threatening and darkly funny. The big complaint is shared: both hosts want more actual Dream Warriors. More time with their abilities. More chances for the group to take Freddy on. When the premise is this good, it’s frustrating to get so little of it.

That keeps both Don and Jon at 4.75, rather than a perfect five. Their matching scores give Dream Warriors a 4.75 average and second place, just behind the original. The first film creates the nightmare. This sequel gives us the most fun fighting our way through it. Runner-up in the countdown, but still a hell of a dream team.

Before the wisecracks became the main attraction, Freddy was something you only half saw and absolutely did not want to meet. Wes Craven made sleep dangerous, turned an ordinary suburban bedroom into hostile territory and gave us Nancy Thompson, a heroine who actually bothers to figure out how to fight back. Forty sequels could not improve on that basic nightmare. Thankfully, we haven’t had to test forty. Yet.

Don’s 4.75 comes from almost everything: the opening, the score, the cast, the dream sequences and practical effects he still enjoys on a rewatch. The film also takes him straight back to childhood. That nostalgia matters, but so does the fact that he would happily turn off the microphones and watch it again.

Jon gives it a full 5.00 because it meets his test for a great movie: it stays in his head, makes him want to talk about it and makes him actively look forward to another viewing.

Don’s 4.75 and Jon’s 5.00 give the original a 4.88 average, rounded from 4.875. That puts the film that started it all at number one, just ahead of Dream Warriors. The sequels find plenty of new ways to keep us awake, but for Don and Jon, the first trip to Elm Street still earns the highest combined score.