20 Horror Movie Happy Endings Nobody Saw Coming
11. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
By its sheer nature as an ongoing horror franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street hasn't historically had much interest in serving up unambiguously happy endings, because of course, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has to come back, right?
But the seventh film in the series, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, took a hard left-turn by effectively functioning as a meta-sequel in which Freddy escapes the bounds of the movie franchise to terrorise the actual cast - especially original heroine Heather Langenkamp (playing herself).
Freddy believes that by killing Heather he can enter the real world for good, all while Heather is compelled to "play Nancy" one last time in order to defeat Freddy once and for all.
It's not inconceivable that this is all building up to Heather's sacrificial demise as the series' grand finale, but thankfully not.
She and her son Dylan (Miko Hughes) manage to destroy Freddy, the implication being that he is now vanquished forever more - at least in this strange tangential continuity.