Back in 1984, horror legend Wes Craven brought forth the founding film in one of the most influential and iconic horror franchises to ever exist, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Throughout the years, the series was a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, taking Freddy Krueger's character in many different directions, though always portrayed to perfection by the great Robert Englund, regardless of the style asked. The quality of the franchise has been quite polarizing among the horror community, as many fans love the sequels, and many don't.

Here's our ranking of the entire A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

8 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 Remake)

This one was a hard sell from the beginning. Replacing Robert Englund with Jackie Earl Haley fresh off a solid performance in The Watchmen (2009) seems like it could have worked, but after two decades of Englund turning Krueger into a campy, slapstick-style villain, the mid-to-late-2000's run of gritty 80's slasher remakes didn't bode well for this character. Much like Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007), director Samuel Bayer tried to add an unnecessary, dark, and edgy child-rapist backstory to Freddy's past. This took away one of the best things about slasher flicks, which was the ability to cheer for the villain as he picked off annoying unsuspecting teenage victims, one by one.

7 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Although Freddy had constantly flip-flopped between a serious villain and a laughable comedian, Freddy's Dead was really the culmination of the nonsensical slapstick caricature that Freddy became over time. It barely should be considered a horror film, considering there's nothing even remotely scary about it. By the time we get to the sixth film, the terror behind Freddy has all been replaced with quips and comedic kills. This film also included a weird storyline seemingly out of nowhere about Freddy having a long-lost daughter, but at least boasts some memorable scenes where Freddy makes a kill with his version of the PowerGlove and flies around as the Wicked Witch of the West. Freddy's Dead is much more of a party film to passively watch with friends than anything else.

6 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Nightmare 5 is maybe the strangest of the entire franchise. Where we appreciate going a bit into Freddy's lore, a massive amount of the film is devoted to his backstory, rather than the slashing we're accustomed to. We get a few cool kill scenes, like a comic-style animation attack and a great murder cycle, but the boring, yet somehow convoluted story of Freddy's past and the birth of an old-man-looking baby was just a little too much.

5 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

A lot of people give this film more flack than it deserves, mostly because it was fresh off the heels of the classic original, and because it changed Freddy's power set. Rather than just being able to attack in dreams, Freddy was now taking full possession of the film's Final Boy, Jesse (Mark Patton). Patton did a fantastic job of playing a terrified teen, afraid of what he was doing while possessed by the crazed serial killer. Fans were a bit mad that Freddy could come into the real world and cause havoc, but they were shown at the end of the first film that Freddy could be brought back. The film gets a lot more love now, but at the time of release, due to a lot of LGBTQ+ themes that were purposely written and directed, Freddy's Revenge was seen as a failure. For those of you interested in this one, there is a wonderful documentary on Shudder titled Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street that goes into a lot of detail about the film's creation and reception.

4 New Nightmare (1994)

New Nightmare gets a lot of credit for its brutality and its originality. Though Craven started getting a little meta later down the line in his Scream franchise, New Nightmare was his first attempt at it. In this film, the audience is brought into the real world as actors Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund are playing themselves, and Freddy breaks through to the real-world reality wall to slay. Though many love the film, some horror fans struggled with the film's storyline, thinking it was too silly, even for this franchise. Most of the complaints came from the aesthetics, due to Freddy's makeup and claw looking worse than any of the prior films.

3 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1989)

This film was almost a perfect mix of the seriousness and silliness that the franchise had to offer. It didn't quite match the quality of the previous film, but provided a nice continuation of Dream Warriors, fantastic practical effects (including the pizza shown above), continuing with a great final girl in Alice (Lisa Wilcox), and an absolutely masterful kill scene involving a waterbed, that was clearly a shoutout to the first film. The film also holds one of the best nightmare sequences of the franchise, showing an incredible cockroach transformation the belongs in the best of goopy 80's horror effects. Dream Master may not be the best all-around Nightmare film, but it's certainly one of the most fun.

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2 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

It's honestly a struggle to not put the original as the best, being that it's such an iconic film and so important to the slasher genre. Wes Craven had done something no one else had done, which made us feel vulnerable in a place where we could seemingly control anything and everything, our dreams. The choice of Robert Englund was spot on, as he hadn't gone full-slapstick in the franchise, and was much more imposing and creepy in the original. Horror had never seen such effects like Freddy's face coming through the wall to signify one of the all-time great Final Girls, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), slowly falling asleep, or the grotesque geyser of blood that erupted as Glen (Johnny Depp) was sucked into his bed.

The acting was excellent, with great supporting performances from actors like John Saxon, Ronee Blakely, and Amanda Wyss. The original sported one of the most intense scenes in horror, with Tina (Amanda Wyss) being dragged around the ceiling, screaming while blood was trailing behind. Everything about A Nightmare On Elm Street was innovative, from the upside-down camera shots all the way down to Freddy's design. He was truly the scariest slasher villain because he could get you where the others couldn't.

1 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Dream Warriors did many of the things that the original did, but better. The magic of the third film came with a combination of bringing Nancy back after a somewhat disappointing follow-up, cleaner and more realistic effects, a cast of fun, relatable characters like Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Kristen (Patricia Arquette), and toeing the line perfectly between scary and campy. Dream Warriors also isolated the characters even more, by putting them in an unfamiliar situation and location of a mental institution. The film explored the characters more and offered depth to both Nancy and Freddy, as well as offered a way for the characters to fight back on their own.

The kills are all so deeply personal to the victim, and incredibly memorable. The aspiring actress gets "welcomed to Primetime", the drug addict is injected by Freddy's terrifying syringe claw. You can't forget the wildly imaginative puppeteering scene. The film also totes an absolute banger theme song by Dokken. Where the original should hold a special place in everyone's heart for its innovation and iconic status, Dream Warriors takes the cake for the best all-around Nightmare film.