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A Nightmare on Elm Street arrives on 4K Blu-ray for the first time in a new collection. The films follow Freddy Krueger, a child murderer who escaped conviction due to a legal technicality. Seeking justice for their murdered children, the parents tracked him to his boiler-room hideout, doused it with gasoline, and set it on fire to make sure he could never kill again.

Upon his death, Freddy gained supernatural powers that allowed him to invade the dreams of children and teenagers. In the dream world, whatever happens is real—if he kills them in their sleep, they die in real life.

The Nightmare on Elm Street set looks beautiful from the first film all the way to the final film. The visuals are stunningly clear and really pop off the screen. The blacks are deep and give a strong sense of depth to the image, making scenes feel more immersive and dimensional rather than flat. The films have a pop-like effect with strong layering; where the background, and lighting all stand out clearly. The faces and skin tones look beautiful; you can see fine detail in facial features, expressions, and makeup that were hard to notice before. Clothing, shadows, and set details all benefit from the clarity, giving the films a richer and more detailed appearance. The overall presentation feels clean, sharp, and consistent from film to film. It’s an impressive presentation that makes the series feel refreshed while still staying true to the original look and atmosphere.

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare 3D review

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare follows a group of older teens at a troubled youth centre. A lot of the kids have been badly abused by their parents. One of the staff workers and one of the kids start having similar dreams, so they decide to visit Springwood to try and find him. The other teens hide in the van and end up going with them. When they arrive, they realise they are trapped in the town and all the adults act very strangely and like kids. They soon find out that Freddy is trying to kill them, and they also learn that Freddy has a child, who turns out to be one of the group. The kids work out quite early on what is happening and try to stop him by fighting him in the dream world.

Freddy’s Dead is a very strange film, and unlike the previous films, it has a lot more comedy in it and isn’t as scary. One thing I thought was clever was how it shows subtle hints of the characters’ trauma early on. For example, one girl becomes very defensive and angry when a boy touches her while they are playing. Later in the film we find out she was raped by her dad, which makes her reaction make sense. One aspect I found odd was how the adults in Springwood behave like children, almost as if Freddy had created his own twisted town. This idea is interesting but never fully explained. I also thought the twist regarding Freddy’s child was clever, as the person we are led to believe is his child turns out not to be. The ending, however, feels abrupt, and I was disappointed that some characters didn’t survive.

The main reason I was excited for this film was because the last twenty minutes are in 3D and were filmed in 3D. A clever part of this is that when a character puts on 3D glasses in the film, that’s when the audience puts theirs on as well. The 3D was good, but unfortunately, the film lost a lot of colour and looked almost black and white, which could have been caused by my TV or the glasses. The film uses old-style red and blue (or red and green) 3D glasses, which gave it a pop-up book effect. You could see a lot of depth and some really good pop-out moments. In certain scenes, objects flew out of the screen and felt like they were halfway between your face and the TV. I do wish the effects were more in-your-face, but overall I really liked them and they made the film more fun. I would definitely recommend watching the 3D version.

A New Nightmare was the film that came after, and I think it was the first time something like this had been done. It is half documentary and half acting, with all the actors playing themselves, including Wes Craven. This time Freddy comes into the real world. I thought this film was very clever and interesting to watch, especially seeing the actors from the first film playing themselves rather than characters. Again, the ending is quite abrupt, but it is a very unique and clever film that I enjoyed.

Unfortunately, the 4k is far darker than the Blu-ray and dvd but it looks more warm colours and tone. If I hadn’t seen previous versions then this would still look great but for darker scenes it is harder to make out faves and more In lots of ways I prefer brighter as it makes the darker scenes easier to see and the 4k has been slightly cropped from Blu-ray. I also noticed that the 4k bluray has been very slightly cropped compared to previous Blu-ray versions this I find this very annoying. The films were also on open matte so you could see far more on top and bottom for 4:3 versions and so I wish they combined that version with the normal 1.85:1 so we could see more on the sides and top and bottom instead of sacrificing one. For some of the later films, I noticed some of the characters’ faces looked washed out. When watching a new nightmare I noticed very few shots looked not very good quality it was mainly noticeable in one scene with the road. When it had a zoomed out shot the quality for a few seconds wasn’t very good, maybe it looked like this on previous versions aswell but it could have been an issue with the camera. 

The special features were a bit of a let down as all of them seemed to be interviews and commentaries without really any being of the scenes footage. While the interviews were interesting I would have liked actual behind-the-scenes footage. 

Overall the Nightmare on Elm Street 4k box set is definitely worth getting for great picture, good stories and for any fan of the franchise, or anyone who enjoys 3D. 

Looking for Horror movie recommendations? Check out our ‘22 of the best horror films from the 1980s‘ article.