How To Watch The Nightmare On Elm Street Movies In Order

Summary

• The Nightmare On Elm Street franchise started strong with the 1984 original, but suffered some missteps in later sequels.
• The series took a new direction with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, contributing to a different kind of timeline confusion.
• Despite attempts to revive the franchise with a remake in 2010, the future of Nightmare On Elm Street remains uncertain.

The Nightmare On Elm Street in order includes nine movies, which has prompted some viewers to wonder what’s the best way to watch the franchise. A Nightmare On Elm Street proved a huge hit when director Wes Craven’s iconic slasher horror movie was released in 1984. The story of a serial killer who returned from the dead to haunt the children of his murderers from beyond the grave, A Nightmare On Elm Street’s scariest innovation was its villain. Freddy Krueger was a dream demon who attacked the heroes in their sleep, meaning the franchise’s teens weren’t safe anywhere.

The Nightmare On Elm Street movies have remained one of the biggest slasher franchises thanks to the success found in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Robert Englund’s unforgettable Krueger went down in horror history as one of the sub-genre’s most memorable monsters, inspiring countless parodies and imitations in the years after the original movie’s success. Freddy’s distinct scarred visage and his killer one-liners made it so that audiences continued to have an interest in seeing more movies involving him. However, the series’ chronology can be easy to forget or misunderstand after nine movies.

The Nightmare On Elm Street Movies In Release Order

Nightmare On Elm Street Movies Released Between 1984 And 2010

The Nightmare On Elm Street movies began in 1984 with A Nightmare On Elm Street. This sleeper hit marked the beginning of an impressive run where six movies came out in the span of only eight years. This began with the often misjudged A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge coming a year later, and then a rare gap taken as A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors epitomized the potential of the franchise by leaning into its outlandish elements. The next two sequels continued this approach, but to diminishing returns, as Dream Warriors secretly ruined the franchise.

The critically abhorred outing effectively killed any lingering interest in the franchise until original director Wes Craven returned.

Freddy was reduced to spouting corny quips and killing celebrities during ill-advised cameos by the time Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare arrived. The critically abhorred outing effectively killed any lingering interest in the franchise until original director Wes Craven returned. New Nightmare preceded Scream’s meta-takedown of slasher tropes but failed to set the box office alight. The franchise then sought reinvention through the slasher showdown Freddy Vs Jason, only for Kreuger to remain inactive until the Nightmare On Elm Street remake. This is the correct viewing order for when each Nightmare On Elm Street movie came out.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

The First Film Is The Easiest To Place On The Timeline

While the chronology of the series is a little choppy later on, the series definitively begins with 1984’s original A Nightmare On Elm Street. This slasher sees Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson try to work out the identity of the monstrous figure haunting her dreams as he kills off her friends. John Saxon plays Nancy’s father, while a young Johnny Depp plays her love interest.

The original film features some of the most iconic imagery from the franchise, like Freddy’s tongue coming through the phone, or Depp’s character being swallowed by a bed. The movie serves to set up the main premise of the franchise as well as introduce Freddy as an iconic horror movie villain.

A Nightmare on Elm Street takes place over the course of several days with the teens fearing the consequences of falling asleep. However, the movie also includes one baffling moment in the timeline as it is unclear if the final scene really happens or if it should just be ignored.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

The First Sequel Is Set A Few Years Later

1985’s A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge sees its hero Jesse move into Nancy’s old house but otherwise bears no relation to the preceding movie. The only reason the audience knows that it must come after the first movie is that Nancy’s family isn’t living in her house. Bizarrely, Freddy barely invades any dreams in the sequel, instead just possessing Jesse as though the movies were ghost stories.

Despite the fact that the film came out only a year after the original was released, A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 takes place five years later. While the movie moves on from its previous final girl, Nancy went on to return in future sequels.

Though Nancy doesn’t appear, there is mention of Jesse’s home being previously owned by a family whose daughter has a breakdown after witnessing her boyfriend being murdered in front of her, confirming that the events of the first movie were not undone as the ending initially suggests.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Dream Warriors Brings Nancy Back & Moves Forward Another Few Years

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was a return to form for the series. Set several years after the first movie, this outing saw Nancy return as an adult psychiatrist treating a group of patients who were picked off by Freddy. This sequel introduced the premise of “Dream Warriors,” characters who could use their own dream powers to defeat Freddy. One is Kristen, played by Patricia Arquette, whose mother has her admitted to the psychiatric hospital when Freddy injures Kristen in her sleep, and her mother thinks she’s hurting herself.

Kristen actually has the ability to bring others into her dreams. Though the premise might seem outlandish to some, it fits perfectly in line with Freddy Krueger, a demonic entity who uses people’s dreams to attempt to cross over into the real world. The movie further ties things back to the original as it is revealed that the Dream Warriors are the last of the Elm Street children, the offspring of the parents who killed Freddy Krueger back when he was a human.

There is some disturbing backstory to Freddy introduced in this installment…

This revelation also brings back John Saxon as Nancy’s father and the one man who knows where Freddy’s remains are. There is some disturbing backstory to Freddy introduced in this installment with it revealing his mother was an orderly at a psychiatric facility for criminals who was accidentally locked in with the inmates, sexually assaulted, and gave birth to a baby, Freddy, as a result.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Set One Year After Dream Warriors

Director Renny Harlin took over after the third outing and A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master picked up only one year after the previous movie’s ending, bringing back numerous characters from its predecessor. Kristen passes the torch to one of her friends as she and her fellow dream warriors fall victim to Freddy.

However, A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master’s plot was a little more threadbare as Freddy simply started killing victims at random after getting his revenge on the Elm Street families. The movie takes place a year after the events of the previous film and directly connects to that story by returning to the junkyard where Freddy’s remains were left.

Along with Kristen, the characters of Kincaid and Joey also return but all three characters are the first victims of Krueger after surviving the previous movie. It also brings in a new hero, with Alice Johnson taking over following Kristen’s death.

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

A Short Time Gap Comes Between The Fourth & Fifth Movies

This sequel takes place not long after the fourth movie and saw Lisa Wilcox return as Alice Johnson, one of the franchise’s most resilient Final Girls. However, A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child’s story was a disappointing mashup of earlier, stronger outings for a lot of fans. It brought some of Freddy’s family history, which had been hinted at in previous installments, to the screen, and continued the story of Alice from the fourth movie. The movie saw Freddy using Alice’s unborn child to attempt to bring himself back to life.

The Dream Child
also goes back to the Freddy Krueger backstory introduced in
A Nightmare On Elm Street 3…

The movie continues the trend of the franchise’s previous entries, with a one-year gap from the last entry and continuing on with the protagonist that was introduced in the last movie. The Dream Child also goes back to the Freddy Krueger backstory introduced in A Nightmare On Elm Street 3, with a flashback showing Freddy’s mother, Amanda Krueger, being attacked in this hospital and her spirit being a key weapon in defeating Freddy.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

The Final Nightmare Sees Another Decade Pass

Set 10 years in the future, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare had few canon connections with the earlier movies and mostly focused on an all-new cast that proved to be full of forgettable characters. The movie attempted to expand Freddy’s lore by revealing his daughter and connection to the “dream demons” that give him power in people’s nightmares. It was also supposed to be the final installment of the franchise, as New Line Cinema had other franchises the studio wanted to focus on.

It adds even more to Freddy’s backstory with flashbacks to when he was alive and his daughter finding his cellar where he would murder his young victims.

While this was obviously not the final entry in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it was the ending of the canon established in the first six movies, even if it doesn’t share a lot of connections to those movies. It adds even more to Freddy’s backstory with flashbacks to when he was alive and his daughter finding his cellar where he would murder his young victims. There are also brief flashbacks showing young Freddy killing an innocent animal as a child and killing his own father as a teenager.

The movie also introduces a new element of Freddy’s powers as it is revealed that he made a deal with dream demons just before his death so that he could return to stalk victims in their dreams.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

The First Film To Truly Mess Up The Timeline

Released in 1994, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare saved the franchise, but it was the first movie to mess up the franchise timeline. Wes Craven finally returned to the franchise as director and made a story about Freddy attacking his real-life creator, Heather Langenkamp, and even Robert Englund, a trippy meta-joke that meant this entire movie took place outside of the franchise’s timeline. In reality, it only needs to be watched after Langenkamp’s appearances in the franchise to make sense, but the movie is clearly dated as taking place in the early ’90s.

The movie feels like a precursor to Wes Craven’s Scream which would come out two years later and continue the very ahead-of-its-time meta commentary on the horror genre. It is also interesting that it is established that this is a new version of Freddy, darker and more sinister than the cartoonish villain he had become in the sequels.

Freddy Vs Jason (2003)

The Icons Faced Off Sometime After Freddy Was Last Defeated

2003’s Freddy Vs Jason offered just what its title promised. Seemingly set around 2003 (two years after Freddy’s defeat in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare), the franchise crossover unites two of the most iconic horror movie villains for a deadly team-up before ultimately turning on each other as a result of their differences. The idea here is that Freddy is stuck in the afterlife, upset that he’s been forgotten by those in his hometown. He uses his powers of dream manipulation to resurrect Jason Voorhees and tricks him into targeting his hometown so he can be remembered again.

The idea of the team-up was certainly an interesting one, especially once Jason realized he’d been taken advantage of. The movie can largely exist as a standalone movie as it doesn’t pull in too many elements of the existing timeline. However, both Freddy and Jason are established to be known terrors, confirming that at least some of their past murder sprees did occur in this timeline.

Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

This Reboot Is Technically In It’s Own Timeline

2010’s Nightmare On Elm Street remake takes place outside the franchise’s continuity, so it doesn’t fit within the original timeline at all. It does, however, definitely take place in the 2000s. The much-maligned 2010 remake rewrote Freddy’s backstory, changed his appearance, and left both fans and critics furious. While there are nods to the original movie, it was too far removed from what the audience wanted, even if some of those audience members weren’t even born yet when the original movie was released.

The movie recreated a lot of the famous moments from the original movie, not adding to many new details to the lore of the story. One key and controversial aspect was confirming details about Freddy’s crimes that were never explicitly stated in the original movies. The movie also updates aspects of the story for the 21st century, including the heroes of the movie watching a video diary of a fellow Elm Street victim recording their attempts to fight off sleep.

The Future Of The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise

Future Movies And TV Series Have Been Rumored

It has been nearly 15 years since the last Nightmare on Elm Street movie was released and there is still no confirmed news of a project in the franchise. In 2015, David Leslie Johnson (Orphan) was brought in to write a new movie in the series for Warner Bros. but the project soon fell into development hell (via The Wrap). In 2019, it was announced that the rights to the franchise had reverted back to the Wes Craven estate and that they were beginning to take pitches on a new approach for the series.

It was reported that the estate heard pitches for movies as well as TV series, but nothing ever came from it. During this period, Mike Flanagan revealed he had a pitch for a new Nightmare on Elm Street as well. While nothing came of this, Flanagan’s name in horror had only increased, meaning that there might be new interest in having him take over the franchise in the future. Unfortunately, any new Nightmare on Elm Street project will be a long way off as nothing has been confirmed.