Nightmare on Elm Street endings ranked in terms of stupidity
Let's face it - none of the nine Nightmare on Elm Street movies stick the landing. All end with various implausible and largely temporary deaths for Freddy Krueger - and they're all ranked below, from bad to inexsplicably terrible.
WARNING: Spoilers for all films in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Obviously.
Let's start with the least stupid:
9/ Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
This was the last time we saw Robert Englund in the fedora onscreen - and fittingly this was a cheeky sendoff to the character before he was butchered in the 2010 remake. After a lengthy faceoff with Jason (Ken Kirzinger), the final shot sees Mr Voorhees emerging from Crystal Lake with Krueger's decapitated head.
Englund closes the scene with a wink at the camera and a voice-over maniacal laugh - a tongue-in-cheek acceptance that both Freddy and Jason are not going to die permanently anytime soon.
8/ Freddy's Dead (1991)
Freddy's Dead is widely agreed to be the worst film in the Elm Street series - but it does have a vaguely sensible death scene for Mr Krueger.
Pulled into the real world, he gets the shit kicked out of him by his daughter Maggie (Lisa Zane). Painfully slipping his broken fingers into the knife glove for one last go-round, Maggie is having none of it - pinning him to the wall with various sharp objects before stabbing him with his own glove and then blowing him up. Naturally, we cap things off with one final naff one-liner from Freddy and then... kaboom!
7/ Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Yep, even though the Elm Street remake is inferior in almost every way to Wes Craven's original, it does have a less tangled and annoying ending. We don't have to deal with the Home Alone traps or the "just ignore him and it'll be fine" twist.
Pulled out of the dream world by Nancy (Rooney Mara this time round), he's quickly dispatched with a throat slit before Nancy and Quentin (Kyle Gallner) burn his body. But - surprise, surprise - Nancy's mum (Connie Britton) is still going to croak it at the end of this movie. Freddy smashes out of a mirror and stabs her through the face from behind. The kill is cool, but Freddy's survival here doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
6/ Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Even Wes Craven has admitted to disliking the ending to the original Elm Street movie - yet his original idea of having the dead characters return and imply the whole movie was just one big dream sounds even worse.
There's much to dislike about the film's conclusion - the ridiculous idea that ignoring Freddy makes him go away; the laughable booby traps Nancy sets for him; placing emphasis on how pulling Freddy into the real world is the key to defeating him without this really going anywhere; and a final scene that leaves it up in the air which characters are dead or alive - which is then just kind of ignored by the time we get to Dream Warriors.
5/ Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
OK, I get that Freddy's end here was set up by Dylan's (Miko Hughes) love of Hansel and Gretel. And the stretching arm and tongue effects are peak-Freddy. But still... surely it's harder to kill an ancient demon thing than just setting fire to it.
I guess that what actually stopped 'Freddy' here was the movie itself, as suggested by the film script at the end and Craven's note thanking Heather for playing Nancy one final time. But this isn't really explained. The movie as a whole leans more towards character and emotional logic than actually making sense, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the ending is still underwhelming.
4/ Dream Warriors (1987)
I'm of the opinion that Dream Warriors' ending ruins this second best Freddy outing. The key to defeating Freddy is revealed midway through the movie by Exposition Nun (Nan Martin) - robbing the latter half of the film of any kind of tension, since then it's just a case of the characters doing what she told them.
You also have to contend with the following - a stop motion skeleton victory dance; Joey (Rodney Eastman) discovering his dream power is just to shout real loud; and the knowledge that ultimately all this effort to defeat Freddy would be undone by fiery dog piss. Eurgh. Nancy's death will still get you in the feels though.
3/ The Dream Master (1988)
This one makes me angry. Alice (Lisa Wilcox) defeats Freddy by remembering some nursery rhyme, then making Freddy look at his reflection, which for some reason makes him explode.
The effects are great but surely this is one of the worst endings of any film ever. You just know the screenwriters (Brian Helgeland, Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat) were scrabbling to work out a way to draw things to a close and just thought "this'll do". Is it all that surprising to learn Dream Master was a rush job, with the initial script written in nine days?
2/ The Dream Child (1989)
Now if you thought Dream Master was stupid... Alice's unborn son Jacob (Whit Hertford) decides to turn to the dark side, telling Freddy: "I want to learn stuff from you. She's no fun anymore." Before anyone explains what exactly this "stuff" is, Amanda Krueger (Beatrice Boepple) tells Jacob to "unleash the power he has given you". OK...
This power appears to be an oversized Freddy tongue, which punctures Krueger. He's then dragged back towards Amanda by the heads of this film's victims, like an inferior rehash of Dream Warriors. Then he turns back into a baby and is absorbed back into Amanda's womb. Jacob jumps back into Alice too. What. The. Fuck.
1/ Freddy's Revenge (1985)
The absolute worst Nightmare on Elm Street ending by a long shot - the others are just stupid but this one is actively offensive. The whole film has a troubled legacy due to its queer subtext - which on the one hand is great for an 80s movie, but also equates a teenage boy discovering he might be into other boys with him turning into a monster.
This homophobic reading of the film is capped off with Freddy's combustion following a kiss from Lisa (Kim Myers) - Freddy is literally defeated by heterosexuality. The villain being overcome by True Love is bad enough, but getting to the happy ending via the main character deciding not to be gay is repugnant. I hate it.
Freddy also features on my list of top ten slasher kills. Find out which kill here.
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