A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) movie poster

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

"If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all."
ThumbScore
👍 87%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 85%
Horror

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Where to Watch

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Director
Runtime
1h 31m
Rated
R
Country
United States of America, United Kingdom
Language
English
TMDB Rating
7.3/10 (5,626 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
94%
Metacritic
76

Cast

John Saxon as Lt. Donald Thompson · 78% avg
Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson
Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson · 81% avg
Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray
Jsu Garcia as Rod Lane · 69% avg
Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz · 75% avg
Charles Fleischer as Dr. King · 76% avg
Joseph Whipp as Sergeant Parker

Is A Nightmare on Elm Street good?

Yes. 87% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 85%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#101 / 1168 · Horror
Rank in its year
#12 / 46 · 1984
Rank among its director's films
#3 / 14 · Wes Craven

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world... Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film written and directed by Wes Craven. The film follows a group of teenagers in the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio who are stalked and killed in their dreams by Freddy Krueger, played by Robert Englund, a disfigured serial killer with a glove of razor-sharp finger blades who was burned alive by the town's parents after being released from prison on a technicality. When the teens fall asleep, Freddy enters their nightmares and kills them — and the wounds they suffer in dreams appear on their bodies in reality, making sleep itself lethal.

Wes Craven conceived Freddy Krueger based on reports of Southeast Asian refugees who died in their sleep from unexplained causes, and the concept of a villain who attacks through the one biological function no human can avoid gave the film a uniquely inescapable horror premise. Robert Englund's Freddy, with his burned face, striped sweater, fedora, and darkly witty one-liners, became the most iconic horror villain of the 1980s alongside Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. The film introduced a then-unknown Johnny Depp in his film debut.

A Nightmare on Elm Street earned $57 million worldwide on a $1.8 million budget and spawned a massive franchise.

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