A Nightmare on Elm Street
New Line Cinema | Release Date: November 16, 1984 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
EmpireSimon Braund
What makes Freddy truly terrifying, and an inspired invention on Craven's part, is that he exists not in the real world but in the shadowy realm of dreams. Read full review
90
Washington PostPaul Attanasio
For such a low-budget movie, Nightmare on Elm Street is extraordinarily polished. The script is consistently witty, the camera work (by cinematographer Jacques Haitkin) crisp and expressive. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A Nightmare on Elm Street is tailor made for those who like their gore leavened with thought-provoking ideas - something that is a rarity in this genre. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyClark Collis
Some of the effects remain nicely repulsive; Freddy himself comes across as a genuinely nasty piece of work, far removed from his later incarnation. Read full review
80
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
There are some genuinely frightening dream sequences - and some throwaway black humour...it's all good scary fun." Read full review
80
EmpireGavin Bainbridge
Turning slumberland into a twisted murderer's den is a masterstroke by Craven, who has brought new blood to a genre that seemed as if it might choke on it's own excesses. Read full review
80
Variety(Staff Not Cretdited)
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a highly imaginative horror film that provides the requisite shocks to keep fans of the genre happy. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
Here the idea of sleep as the ultimate threat is still fresh and marvelously insidious, and Craven vitalizes the nightmare sequences with assorted surrealist novelties. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineNick Schager
Nightmare’s skill wasn’t that it invented such associations—which had already been thoroughly mined by its ’70s predecessors—but that it refined them in uniquely disturbing ways, drenching itself in an atmosphere of unreality positioned somewhere between waking and slumbering states. Read full review
75
TV Guide Magazine
One of the most intelligent and terrifying horror films of the 1980s. Read full review
70
The New York TimesVincent Canby
A Nightmare on Elm Street puts more emphasis on bizarre special effects, which aren't at all bad. Read full review
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