By Drew Dietsch
| Published
Robert Englund is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on October 31st, 2025. It’s a well-deserved reward for a storied career but also as one of pop culture’s landmark boogeymen, Freddy Krueger. At 78 years old, it’s heartwarming to see Englund given his flowers and presumably end his portrayal of the Nightmare on Elm Street villain in cinema.
I love the character of Freddy Krueger and think there are infinite nightmares you can spin from that particular idea, but when looking at the bigger picture, I can only end up with two desires for the character: 1) Don’t make any more Freddy Krueger movies. Create a new character that can be a generation’s own boogeyman, or 2) A new Freddy Krueger can’t try to do what Robert Englund did with the character.
No More Freddy Krueger
My strongest impulse is to let the character of Freddy Krueger hibernate for an indeterminate amount of time. In that sleep, what dreams may come from the monsters being birthed in today’s horror films.
Black Phone 2 brings back the previous film’s human boogeyman, The Grabber, as a supernatural stalker in the vein of Freddy Krueger. But instead of simply doing a copy-and-paste job, writer C. Robert Cargill and co-writer/director Scott Derrickson have their own character they can craft and play with to their dark hearts’ content. I’d rather see more horror figures like The Grabber emerging to become the new faces of the genre.
But, look, I love Freddy Krueger. I don’t want to live in a world where we aren’t still telling Freddy Krueger stories. The original movie, New Nightmare (my favorite film of the franchise) and the must-see match-up Freddy vs. Jason are all about (in very different ways) what happens when people stop having a Freddy Krueger to point their fear toward.
So, if we must have a Freddy Krueger, it can’t be what Robert Englund made the character.
No More Robert Englund
Robert Englund took the initial role of Freddy Krueger from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and turned the character into an icon he built his career on. It meant that Freddy Krueger became something of a wicked hero to a degree, or at the very least, more of a charming mascot for Robert Englund. Englund’s deliciously hammy acting paired so perfectly with Freddy’s usage as a figure of dark comic delight.
So if a new Freddy Krueger must exist, they either have to go back to the basics of the very first film and the character’s essence, or do something truly radical with the entire concept. You can’t try to echo what Robert Englund brought to Freddy. That was part of the endless issues with the 2010 remake, which I hate that I even had to mention.
If Freddy Krueger must continue as a pop culture figure, the next incarnation must slice their own distinct path with the character. Freddy became known for one-liners, but what about a Freddy that never speaks? Freddy was a killer in the real world, but what if Freddy was something that only ever existed in dreams?
I’m certain there are plenty of young filmmakers with ideas about Freddy Krueger I could never come up with. Give them the reins! Let them run wild with radical takes, but don’t let any of those takes be guided by Robert Englund’s many performances as the character. He carved his take in stone and it will exist forever, beloved boogeyman of my nightmares.
Craft something surprising so we can be scared by Freddy Krueger again, and he can give a whole new generation nightmares.
