Most horror villains emphatically do not need a prequel detailing their origin story, but A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger is an exception. For a lot of slasher horror film series, a villain-centric origin story is a terrible idea. Friday the 13th’s Jason has too tragic a beginning while the origin of Michael Myers is too depressingly pedestrian to feel truly scary, as Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake mistakenly proved. However, in the case of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, a full-on prequel focusing on Freddy’s origin would be the best bet for the iconic slasher franchise.
It is not easy to bring back a beloved slasher franchise in a way that pleases both fans and critics alike. While the 2018 Halloween was a huge success, its 2021 follow-up, Halloween Kills, relied on nostalgia and in-jokes over suspense and scares, and the movie was critically panned as a result. As a result of this historic difficulty, many horror series have instead simply started to reinvent their villains wholesale. Projects like 2019’s Child’s Play and the 2021 sequel Candyman rewrote the origins of their villains, with varying degrees of success, while the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre opted instead to add a direct sequel to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and ignore the rest of the franchise’s canon.
The next incarnation of A Nightmare on Elm Street should aim for reinvention as well and go back before the start of the original. Not only has Freddy Krueger got an interesting enough backstory for the franchise to pull off a prequel centered on his start of darkness, but this is also the best approach for a resurrection of the Nightmare on Elm Street series for numerous reasons.
Freddy Krueger’s Backstory Explained
Freddy’s backstory was gradually revealed across the original Nightmare on Elm Street franchise's movie timeline. The first installment from 1984 revealed only that he was a remorseless child killer who worked as a school janitor until he was caught and killed by an angry mob of parents. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors explained that Freddy's mother was a nun and his father was one of a “thousand maniacs” in an asylum for the criminally insane. Later sequels filled in Freddy’s abusive childhood while a TV spinoff revealed how he went free following his murder trial.
A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Reboot Must Reimagine The Franchise
No matter what story a prospective Nightmare on Elm Street reboot tells, the series can’t simply go back to remaking the well-loved original movies. Freddy needs to be effectively reinvented as a character much like Candyman was in 2021’s reboot sequel, rather than be simply reintroduced to audiences in a thinly veiled retread of his greatest hits and most memorable kills. The 2010 remake proved that Nightmare on Elm Street needs more than the original movie’s familiar plot to feel fresh again, and the series could benefit from offering Freddy a more in-depth backstory. Despite Alice Cooper appearing as Freddy’s stepfather in one brief cameo, an in-depth portrayal of Freddy’s origins is something that the franchise has never attempted in earnest, with the series instead filling in details of Freddy’s past through piecemeal exposition throughout the sequels.
Freddy’s Backstory Would Work As A Prequel
From his abusive upbringing to his first forays into murdering children and then his eventual death at the hands of a mob, Freddy has a clear and well-defined backstory that has never been the focus of a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. His origins have a tragic edge to them, with the original script for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child depicting him as a sympathetic character whose abuse during childhood directly led him to become an embittered sadistic predator in adulthood.
Since the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise’s complicated chronology means Freddy can’t replicate Halloween 2018’s reboot success by making a direct sequel to the original 1984 movie, the best route for the series to take is leaning into the complexities of Freddy’s character. Whether he was genetically doomed to be evil or his cruelty stemmed from a traumatic childhood is the sort of difficult question the series has never approached, and one that could make a Nightmare on Elm Street reboot feel more morally ambiguous than any earlier movie in the franchise.
Freddy’s Backstory Can Humanize Him
A prequel film that delves into Freddy Krueger’s origins could make him more sympathetic or at least more understandable, allowing for empathy, which is something that a Freddy-centric Nightmare on Elm Street reboot needs to prioritize. While the character doesn’t need to become a full-blown antihero, Freddy is a rare case where, unlike the speechless villains Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, the villain retained some of his humanity when he became a slasher antagonist. Freddy isn’t an unthinking, unfeeling killer like his slasher competitors. Since his one-liners, his rage, and his twisted imagination always made him a more human horror antagonist than most slasher villains, this makes a prequel that further humanizes the character a great idea, much like Chucky’s later franchise additions filled in more of that character’s backstory.
Freddy’s Origins Are Nightmare On Elm Street’s Biggest Untold Story
The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise has a lot of unanswered questions in its complicated timeline, but many of them simply aren’t interesting enough to warrant a movie of their own. However, Freddy’s Faustian bargain with the Dream Demons is the sort of scary, fantasy-inflected canon that could carry a prequel movie, particularly if early scenes leave viewers feeling for Freddy and rooting for him to not become the supernatural force of evil he is doomed to end up as.
The Nightmare on Elm Street movies can get away with never answering whatever happened to Neil Gordon because, ultimately, the missing story doesn’t affect the franchise, but answering the question of how Freddy became the monster seen in Wes Craven’s iconic '80s slasher could sustain a successful reboot. While one episode of Freddy’s short-lived TV anthology series did delve into the trial that somehow let Freddy Krueger go free, A Nightmare on Elm Street still needs a prequel that properly fleshes out the iconic villain’s origins more than the franchise needs any other sort of slasher reboot.