10 Horror Movies That Changed Their Franchise

10. A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Admittedly, A Nightmare on Elm Street had at least a smidge of dark humour to it ever since Wes Craven delivered the franchise's first instalment in 1984. The problem is, as the series progressed, the genuine sense of dread and nerve-shredding terror got put more and more on the backburner in place of, at times, outright slapstick comedy.

The film that cemented this change, was Renny Harlin's A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. This was the Elm Street movie that fully embraced the mainstream, that fully embraced pop culture, and that fully did its all to present Freddy Krueger as a knowing, winking villain who was essentially 'in' on the joke.

Granted, The Dream Master was the best performing Elm Street film at the box office up until Freddy vs. Jason rolled around 15 years later, but that's again indicative of how the series and Krueger were moving away from their genuinely chilling roots in order to appeal to the masses.

This pattern of chuckles over scares would only become more prevalent with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child the following year; to the point that this 'horror' franchise had nowhere left to go but to kill off Krueger in 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.