Ranking movies is fun, and I would like to do more blogs that rank movies of a series. However, I have strict criteria that prevents me from making all the lists I'd like. My two rules:
1. I have to have seen every single film in the series.
2. There needs to be at least six movies in the series. I picked six arbitrarily, but less than that just doesn't feel like enough to be worth ranking.
A friend suggested I rank the Friday the 13th movies. The problem is, I don't like most of them, so the bottom six or so would probably be tied with each other. Plus, I don't think I've seen the 2009 reboot, so I would be violating rule #1. I considered Alien, but I still haven't seen Covenant. Plus I'd want to combine it in the same list as the Predator franchise, and I haven't seen the most recent Predator either.
I'm also behind on the most recent releases for the Halloween and Terminator franchises as well. Some would say I'm better off, that most of these recent entries would be at the bottom of the list anyway, but I'm not going to cheat on these lists.
So until I either catch up or think of another prolific film series to rank, here's my list of the best Freddy Krueger movies.
1) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
2) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
3) Wes Craven's New Nightmare
4) Freddy vs. Jason
5) Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
6) A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 reboot)
7) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
8) A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
9) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
More details:
1) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - This is the peak of the series. It has the perfect balance of scary imagery and comic one-liners. It has some of the most iconic scenes in the series, and the special effects were decent for the time, too.
2) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - The original movie still holds up. There's some bad SFX in there, and they hadn't quite figured out Freddy's personality yet, but it's a solid slasher movie if you're into that.
3) Wes Craven's New Nightmare - After the series peaked at 3, Freddy became less scary with each movie, and was more of a comedic character than anything. New Nightmare managed to actually make him scary again. Plus, I like sort of fourth wall, "movie within a movie" theme.
4) Freddy vs. Jason - I'm a sucker for crossovers. I'm probably giving this movie more credit than it deserves, but I do appreciate how faithful it was to both characters, right down to each having their own theme music.
5) Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - The series had leaned heavy into comedy by this point, and I can't say this is a good movie. But it was surreal enough to be entertaining, and at the very least it's my favorite of the bad movies.
6) A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 reboot) - I barely remember the reboot. It was serviceable, but didn't leave much of a mark.
7) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - Four and five are actually tied for me, and the scenes in both movies run together. At this point the series was just, "Let's see what funny death scenes we can think of." They needn't have bothered having a plot at all, the teens buying tickets just wanted to see gore.
8) A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child - See above.
9) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge - This one is bad, but almost enjoyable if you want a good laugh. They hadn't really decided what direction the series was going to go yet, and this one feels very out of place when compared to the rest of the series.
