20 Films That Prove The 1990s Was The Worst Decade For Horror

There may well have been a certain logic to sending Freddy Krueger to his (semi-) final resting place in 1992. The Nightmare on Elm Street icon had pretty much dominated horror in the 1980s, and now that we'd made it to a new decade, perhaps the time was right to move on.

It should have been a great last hurrah for a character who, in his earliest days at least, was one of the scariest movie monsters ever created. Unfortunately, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare simply underlined everything that had gone wrong with Freddy in the years since, and gave him the least dignified send-off imaginable.

Rachel Talalay, having worked her way up through the production ranks over the course of the previous five Nightmare On Elm Street movies (starting out as assistant production manager on the 1984 original), made her directorial debut here; as nice a gesture as that might have been, the resulting film does leave you wondering how much she learned about Freddy in that time.

Robert Englund's once-terrifying dream demon has never been less threatening, all his nightmarish power piddled away in favour of goofy Looney Tunes-esque physical comedy. This might not have been so bad if any of it was actually funny; but guess what, it isn't. It's just supremely annoying, and leaves you wishing Freddy could have been declared dead a bit sooner.