Every Wes Craven Movie Ranked, Worst To Best | Screen Rant
Most famous for giving birth to the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream franchises, Wes Craven is a horror legend who directed more than twenty-five movies in his career, most of them in the horror genre. Though he delved into romance, thrillers, and even adult films in his time as a director, he will be most remembered for his contribution to the horror genre.
Earning undergraduate degrees in English and Philosophy and master’s degrees in philosophy and writing, Wes Craven was an adult teaching English and Humanities at several colleges in New York before he started making movies. He purchased a used 16 mm film camera and began making short movies, until, eventually, he was able to break into the film industry as a sound editor and then a film editor.
Craven’s first work as a filmmaker took place in the world of adult films, until he made his first feature film as a director with The Last House on the Left in 1972. From then on Wes Craven became increasingly solidified as a horror director, though he did stray from the genre from time to time. Here’s how all of Craven’s films rank in comparison to one another.
Vampire in Brooklyn is a horror comedy movie starring Eddie Murphy as the vampire Maximilian. When detective Rita Veder is assigned to a baffling murder case involving a corpse-filled ship found adrift at sea, she meets Maximilian, a Caribbean playboy determined to romance her. But, when Rita begins suffering from crippling hallucinations, she seeks assistance from an occultist who suspects a vampire might be the cause. Cringe-worthy comedy and bad acting make this film a definite weak spot. Not funny nor scary, it fails to be either horror or comedy.
Originally intended as the pilot of a procedural police drama, Night Visions follows Detective Mackey as he tracks the “Spread Eagle Killer”, a serial killer rather crudely named because he leaves his victims with their legs spread. The most interesting aspect of the film is the detective’s reliance on a psychic with dissociative identity disorder to help catch the killer, but even that aspect is clumsily handled and not very engaging. The film as a whole leaves much to be desired.
A TV-movie adaptation of Lois Duncan’s novel Summer of Fear, Stranger in Our House follows Linda Blair as Rachel Bryant, a teenage girl grappling with the arrival of her recently-orphaned cousin, Julia Grant as she comes to live with the family. But strange energies seem to have come along with Julia and Rachel begins to suspect that she may be a witch. Mostly uneventful and uninteresting, Stranger in Our House isn’t a bad film, necessarily, but it’s limited by being a TV-movie and ultimately doesn’t have a lot to offer.
Taking place eight years after the events of the first film, The Hills Have Eyes Part II follows Bobby and Ruby, who now run a Motocross shop together. Both characters have tried to heal from the horrifying events of their past, but when they return to the desert with bikers they’re sponsoring, the Jupiter family returns to try and kill them once again. This film was basically a cash-grab for Craven, and it definitely shows. From the first half of the movie being almost entirely flashbacks from the first film à la Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, and the second half being basically all boring kills, the movie is highly unsuccessful.
Another TV movie, Wes Craven’s Chiller follows businessman Miles Creighton who has a terminal illness and decides to be cryogenically frozen so he can be revived years later when his disease can be cured. However, ten years later when he’s revived, he comes back “without a soul”. Or, more simply, he comes back to life as a sociopath. While Chiller might have been a better film when it originally aired, it really doesn’t hold up with age, and is hugely limited by the TV medium.
Wes Craven’s foray into the werewolf movie sub-genre, Cursed follows siblings Ellie and Jimmy, played by Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg, who come across a car accident on Mulholland Drive. As they try to help the woman caught in the wreckage, a creature attacks them, devouring the woman and clawing Ellie and Jimmy. Of course, they later discover that the creature was a werewolf and they’re now doomed to become werewolves themselves. Basically, Cursed comes across as a Ginger Snaps rip-off, and doesn't offer a lot for audiences to sink their teeth into.
Invitation to Hell is a supernatural horror film made for TV that focuses on a family being threatened into joining a mysterious country club in their new Southern California community. The film stars Susan Lucci and is essentially a mix of The Stepford Wives and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. It’s one of the strongest of Craven’s TV movies, even being nominated for a Primetime Emmy. That being said, it’s still a bit bland, suffering from the TV medium of its time, though it’s still a perfectly passable film.
Wes Craven’s version of Short Circuit, Deadly Friend follows a teenage robotics enthusiast who decides to implant the hard drive of one of his robots into the brain of his next-door neighbor when she’s pronounced brain dead. Originally intended as a thriller with a dark romance between the two main characters, the studio demanded re-writes when test audiences criticized the lack of blood or violence Craven was by then known for. Whether this film would have been better in its original form is anyone’s guess, but in its final iteration, the film is laughably awful. However, it's better than some of Craven’s other films simply because it lands squarely in the "so bad it’s good" category. It also boasts one of the most ridiculous kills in all of horror movie history.
Wes Craven’s Shocker stars Mitch Pileggi as Horace Pinker, a television repairman who’s been recently convicted for a series of gruesome murders. When the film opens, Pinker is facing execution in an electric chair, but thanks to a deal with the devil, he comes back in the form of electricity to take his revenge on the detective that brought him down, Lt. Don Parker. But, when Parker’s adopted son Jonathan discovers he has a strange mental connection to Pinker, he’s able to use his dreams to help track the killer’s movements. This film gets a bad rap for a silly plot construct, but it was actually a fairly decent commercial success upon its release. The dialogue is cheesy and the acting is pretty bad, but Shocker is actually a thoroughly enjoyable film that deserves more love than it gets.
Music of the Heart follows Meryl Streep as a depressed music teacher who lands a job teaching underprivileged kids in New York City. Despite some initial challenges, the program is successful until budget cuts have it being shut down and Streep has to organize a fundraising concert to keep the program afloat. Music of the Heart is a perfectly passable film, bringing Wes Craven out of his horror comfort zone, but it’s a bit too sugary sweet to offer much depth.
Originally intended as the final installation to the scream series, Scream 3 takes place in Hollywood where Gale Weathers and Dwight Riley are serving as on-set advisors to Jennifer Jolie as “Stab 3” is being shot. But when someone decides to start killing off cast members for real, only Sidney Prescott, now in hiding, can solve the riddle and stop the killings. Because the film was originally a very underwhelming ending to the Scream franchise, a lot of fans really hate this movie. That being said, it’s not a bad film per-se, just the weakest installment in the Scream franchise.
Paris, Je T'aime is a romance anthology film featuring 20 short films from a variety of different directors. Wes Craven’s segment is called “Père-Lachaise”, and follows a young woman who breaks up with her fiancé because he doesn’t make her laugh. Aided by the ghost of Oscar Wilde, he’s able to win her back. The segment is probably one of the best in the movie, offering a sweet and creative short romance film.
Deadly Blessing is an interesting supernatural slasher film that focuses on a married couple, Martha and Jim, who live on a farm near a community of Hittites, an Amish-like group. When Jim dies in an accident, Martha is left alone and an entity begins targeting her. Two friends come to visit, but they begin to experience the same strange occurrences as the three women struggle to figure out what’s going on. This film is highly underrated, showcasing Craven’s talents in building suspense with a creative and thought-provoking thriller.
Red Eye stars Rachel McAdams as hotel manager Lisa Reisart flying back from her grandmother's funeral. At the airport she meets the charming Jackson Rippner, played by Cillian Murphy, and then finds herself seated next to him on the plane. What starts out as serendipity quickly takes a dark turn when she learns that Jackson has kidnapped her father as insurance to get her to help him assassinate the head of Homeland Security. A tense thriller, Red Eye is definitely deserving of more love than it gets. It’s a good film that successfully builds tension right up to the end with a slasher-like chase scene.
The most successful cinematic depiction of this DC comics hero, Craven’s Swamp Thing follows the botanist Dr. Alec Holland as, on the verge of a breakthrough, he’s placed under government protection. But, when a rogue scientist tries to steal Dr. Holland’s research, an accident transforms Dr. Holland into the Swamp Thing. While the film is definitely cheesy and hasn’t aged that well, it’s really an enjoyable movie that successfully brought an underutilized DC hero to the screen for the first time.
Craven’s second feature film, The Hills Have Eyes introduces the killer hillbilly Jupiter family. When the Carter family, on vacation with a camper trailer, stop to camp in the Nevada desert, they’re targeted by a family of cannibal savages and become stranded in the middle of nowhere as they’re picked off one by one. A brutal film that’s still difficult to watch in the modern day, this movie hasn’t aged as well as some of Craven’s other classics. That said, it’s still full of effective scares and tension throughout.
Wes Craven’s final film in the Scream franchise, Scream 4 finds Sidney Prescott many years later having written a self-help book as a solution to help her heal from the trauma she’s endured at the hands of the Ghostface killer. When Sidney returns to Woodsboro for her book tour she reunites with old friends and her old nemesis. While Scream 4 had a lot to live up to in bringing a satisfying ending to the Scream franchise, it managed to do that pretty successfully. While certainly not a perfect film, it far surpasses its predecessor and brings a gory ending to the series and Craven’s filmography.
The second-to-last movie Craven ever made, My Soul to Take gets a really bad reputation that it doesn’t deserve. A local legend in the small town of Riverton says a serial killer will come back and kill the seven children who were born on the night he supposedly died. Taking place 16 years later, Riverton residents are disappearing again, making some wonder if the legend is true. The film follows Bug, a teenage boy who has been plagued by nightmares all his life, and is one of the so-called “Riverton Seven”. Soon, it's up to him to save his friends from an evil that will not rest. Offering a creative plot with tons of interesting twists and turns, this film is by far Wes Craven’s most underrated, and a lot of fun to watch.
A new and interesting look at the Haitian zombie myth, The Serpent and the Rainbow follows anthropologist Dennis Alan (Bill Pullman) as he travels to Haiti to study a Vodou drug used in religious practices to turn victims into living zombies. With the help of a witch doctor and a fellow researcher, Dennis starts to piece together the deadly mystery. Offering some really interesting set pieces and nightmarish dream sequences, this film is a unique take on a zombie movie, delving more deeply into the real lore behind the legend.
Wes Craven’s first film, The Last House on the Left follows two young girls who go to the city for a concert, but wind up captured by a gang of escaped convicts who rape, torture, and kill them in the woods just a few miles away from the home of one of the girls. The gang members pose as salesmen and are taken in by Mari’s parents, but it doesn’t take long for her parents to realize who the gang is and begin plotting their revenge. A truly brutal and horrific film, The Last House on the Left is an excellent movie produced with a very small budget.
The People Under the Stairs follows a young boy named Fool who breaks into the home of his family's greedy and uncaring landlords. Once inside he discovers a disturbing scenario where incestuous adult siblings have mutilated a number of boys and kept them imprisoned under the stairs in their large, creepy house. Now Fool has to escape before the psychopaths can catch him. A classic of black horror, The People Under the Stairs is an excellent horror movie that has a tendency to be goofy at times, but is still highly effective at delivering the scares.
Many horror fans’ favorite Nightmare on Elm Street film after the original, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is highly meta, bringing Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, and Robert Englund all on screen as themselves, mashing the fiction of the series with reality as the actors fight Freddy Krueger’s influence in real life. Offering the next step from Wes Craven’s original meta horror film, Scream, New Nightmare, is a film made for horror fans, commenting on the series and the genre while still offering a great story and satisfying kills.
The second installment in the Scream franchise, Scream 2 sees Sidney Prescott and tabloid reporter Gale Weathers team up as two college students are murdered at a sneak preview of "Stab", a movie based on the events from the first film. A copycat killer is on the loose as the first film’s survivors take on the mystery and try to stop the new Ghostface. While not quite as novel as the first film, many horror fans claim Scream 2 is even better than the first. Thanks to its successful scares and the same meta commentary fans loved from the original, it ranks a close second and certainly belongs at the top of Craven’s filmography.
Wes Craven re-invented the slasher with Scream, a modern horror classic that manages to be simultaneously funny, clever, and scary in equal measure as a ghost-masked killer stalks high school students in the suburban town of Woodsboro. Craven ramps up the tension and the body count as local high school student Sidney Prescott and her friends try to figure out who the real killer is. From Drew Barrymore’s perfect opening sequence to Kevin Williamson’s incredibly witty script, Scream allowed the characters on screen to say aloud what the audience was thinking and made a huge impact on the horror genre.
Perhaps Wes Craven’s most famous horror movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street birthed the sinister serial killer Freddy Krueger who hunts his victims in dreams. When a group of teenagers start to see the same burned man with a knife-fingered glove in their dreams, they start to die in real life; the resourceful Nancy Thompson finds a way to fight back.
Freddy Krueger went on to become one of the most famous movie killers of all time, joining Michael Myers from Halloween and Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. Nancy Thompson goes down in history as one of the best final girls of all time. She learns how to set traps, reads about sleep demons, and takes it upon herself to fight back against Freddy at all costs. Delivering excellent scares with a creative premise, terrifying villain, and witty plot, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a great movie that still holds up with age. Having birthed a franchise of nine slasher films plus a television series, novels, and comic books, it is truly Wes Craven’s best work.