A Nightmare on Elm Street has become one of the most important and celebrated horror films of all time, but in spite of its impact, the film’s director, Wes Craven held some reservations regarding the movie’s ending.

Wes Craven is one of the biggest names in the horror genre, responsible for several iconic franchises and dozens of impressive movies. Craven’s career is full of many gems, but his surreal dreamscape of a slasher series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, that still gets the most attention. Freddy Krueger is now entrenched in pop culture as one of cinema’s biggest characters, but Craven was a much smaller name back in 1984 when the movie debuted. A Nightmare on Elm Street still holds up over 35 years later and the movie helped Craven refine his skills as a director.

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A Nightmare on Elm Street made horror audiences question reality and turned something as innocent as sleep into a literal nightmare. The various Elm Street sequels all bring something entertaining to the franchise, but Wes Craven’s original film is still seen as one of the best. It’s hard to replicate Craven’s magic and it’s part of the reason why efforts to reboot the series have been unsuccessful. Despite Craven’s pedigree, he’s still a filmmaker that often clashed with studios and had to compromise the vision for his films. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a triumph, but even it wasn’t immune to this treatment and it led to the film’s ending going through a number of revisions.

Why Wes Craven Regrets A Nightmare On Elm Street's Ending

Nightmare on Elm Street Ending Freddy Krueger Car

One of the best things about A Nightmare on Elm Street that's unique to these movies is how they make the audience unsure if what they're seeing is a dream or reality. This tension is played without the whole movie, but it's especially present during the film's conclusion. The movie concludes with Nancy understanding that Freddy's powers are rooted in if people believe in him and are afraid. She stops believing and she appears to simultaneously wake up, free from Freddy's horrors. Nancy gets ready to go off to school with her friends—all of which previously perished—only for their car to speed off, as if it has a mind of its own. Some creepy children sing the famous Freddy rhyme and finally, Nancy's mother is ripped through the house's front door window, showing that Freddy indeed lives on and remains to call the shots.

This is a powerful conclusion, but Craven wanted to play it much subtler. Nancy and her friends would have safely gotten away and the audience would be left to wonder if she’s truly escaped this threat or if it was all just a big nightmare to begin with. Bob Shaye, the founder of New Line Cinema and the movie's producer, was unhappy with this old fashioned ending and insisted that there should be some sort of twist that follows. Shaye's suggestion was that he wanted Freddy to be the one who's driving the car at the end and presumably taking Nancy and her friends into deeper horrors. Craven just hated the idea of Freddy in the driver's seat and so he and Shaye went back and forth on a handful of different twists.

The theatrical version is the compromise that Craven and Shaye reached that still retains much of Craven's vision without pushing things too far into the absurd. In an oral history of the movie, Craven stated he still prefers the philosophical symbolism of his original ending and while the finished version isn't perfect in his opinion, it's still considerably better than Shaye's initial suggestion. It’s a finale that still has impact and manipulates the audience’s expectations, which would go on to become a staple of endings in the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

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