THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
The scariest things that can come after you are the stuff that your nightmares are made of.
PLOT
A Nightmare on Elm Street follows teenager Tina Grey have a terrifying nightmare of a disfigured man chase her with a clawed glove. When she wakes up from it, her nightgown has the same slashes struck from when she was sleeping. When she shares this with her friends Nancy Thompson and Glen Latz, they share to have similar dreams. She tries to take her mind off it when her boyfriend Rod Lane spends the night, but her life is taken overnight by the same man from her dreams. As he kills her in the dream world, she dies in the real world with the same fatal slashes. With Rod unable to fathom what happened, he runs away as Nancy & Glen find their friend dead. When being arrested by Nancy’s policeman father Don, he pleads innocence. The next day in class, Nancy falls asleep and has another dream of the same man that killed Tina. She wakes herself up by burning herself on a boiler room pipe, but keeps the same mark once awake. When she later visits Rod in jail, he describes now having similar dreams as her. By the evening, she almost drowns by the man in her dreams while sleeping in the bathtub. With caffeine not being enough for her to stay awake, she invites Glen to watch over her while she sleeps. When she does, she is able to see the disfigured man kill Rod in jail and stage it as a suicide, while also turning his attention to her. On the day of his funeral, her parents Don & Marge grow worry of her due to how she describes her dreams. When her mom takes her to a sleep disorder clinic to better improve her sleep, she is able to pull the man’s hat from her dream. She confronts Marge of the hat has the name written ‘Fred Krueger’, asking if she knew anyone with that name. Her mom admits that Krueger was a child murderer who was let go on a technicality, but the victims’ parents retaliated by burning him alive. Knowing this means that Krueger’s ghost is vengeful and is killing her friends out of revenge which satiates his psychotic needs. With Marge barricading the house, Nancy calls Glen and begs him to stay awake with him but he ultimately fails because when he does, Krueger kills him by pulling him into his bed and destroys his body from within. As Don would investigate his death, his daughter calls him and instructs him to break into the house within 20 minutes by the time she plans to pull Krueger out of the next dream. She’s able to overpower him with booby traps when she succeeds in pulling him out. By the time she lights him on fire and traps him in the basement, he’s able to escape and smother Marge in her bedroom. By the time Nancy and Don reach the room, they can only extinguish the fire as they see her vanish into the bed. Understanding that Krueger is fueled by victims’ fears, she proves to not be afraid of him by turning her back on him which causes him to evaporate. It would seem that the evil haunting the neighborhood is over, but the film ends in a cliffhanger where Nancy finds herself stuck in one of her dreams as Krueger traps her and the spirit of her friends in a car in the same color pattern of his sweater, while simultaneously grabbing his mother’s spirit from the front door.
THOUGHTS
The horror sub-genre themed on slasher villains was a peak moment in the 80s because whichever one you got into, you'd be hooked by the end of its era. But if there was fatigue on one franchise, it would be pretty easy to jump ship into something different from before. So for those who got burnt out with four Friday the 13th movies, it was a moment to have welcome arms for something else that felt highly captivating at its time. 12 years before giving homage to the genre with Scream, writer/director Wes Craven made a bone chilling impact with a villain unlike anything that was done before. The supernatural concept of a demon hiding in the dream world and haunting us like prey is terrifying to this day because we always fear nightmares coming to life the way this movie interprets it. Craven created this primal weapon that was highly distinguishable and has become iconic due to an infamous performance. Robert Englund has defined his career as Freddy Krueger because from this first go at the character, he's statistically and psychotically evil. He is striking vengeance at the descendants who took him down for something he was not ashamed of which makes him all the more frightening. If you're shameless of the past and use that as motivation to continue a new reign of terror, it's hard to not be afraid of what you're gonna do next. Freddy has a bigger conscious and uses that to an advantage thus being creative which each kill he commits. It's one thing to hate someone, but a whole other ballgame to pull another into a bed and drag one across the ceiling. Moments like that are the definition of the term 'the stuff that nightmares of made of' which is something he would continue once the sequels piled up. He's the first supernatural slasher, as in before Jason Voorhees got zombified and before Charles Lee Ray possessed a doll, which made him feel the most dangerous. And when you sense that feeling, you start to think he is unstoppable. Thankfully, we have a protagonist that shows up there is a chance to overcome any of our fears as long as we believe in ourselves. Heather Langenkamp makes a great final girl/scream queen as Nancy because she brings this incredible combo of tenacity and determination to save herself from something that should be unimaginable. Each one of her friends she lost weakened her deeply because she knew neither deserved it. Rod was indeed hothead, but Jsu Garcia was able to show his own inner fear of loneliness which he filled whenever he was with Tina. Amanda Wyss was able to portray her as one who's visible most afraid before being first victim because she doesn't know enough to figure out how to avoid death and the only thing she can do is talk about it to get whatever comfort comes her way before it's too late. Even Glen's death was a shocker because although he didn't understand what Nancy was going through, Johnny Depp portrayed him to be a good boyfriend solely off of listening. He hardly knew what to do at the moment, yet did what felt enough to help which is something unreasonable to hate on. Since the teens are the main focus, it's easy to forget how the adults deal with everything. Nancy's parents feel like a dynamic duo because they deal with their stress differently from one another. John Saxon showed Don as a workaholic who didn't know how to communicate with his daughter on what they were feeling. On the other hand, Ronee Blakley showed Marge to be an equally concerning parent since she tries to help Nancy get better but once the dots are connected on who the threat is, she succumbs to alcoholism because she feels doomed that the past came back to consume her for good. Off of that, she has the saddest death because she creates the atmosphere that she saw it coming and no matter how hard Nancy tried to protect her house, it was too late. Even though Nancy uses her width to overpower Freddy, the ending in which she's trapped in another dream was bold at the time (before the sequels replicated it) because it honestly told us that evil is not easy to vanquish which only makes Krueger all the more terrifying to this day. While there are things that make this film hold up, but then there’s things that don’t due to a handful of illogical moments. For starters, it was funny for Glen to use a sound effects to trick his mom into spending the night elsewhere, but he could’ve checked the tape in advance to minimize her own confusion. I respect Nancy wanting to defend Rod because she knows he loved Tina, but it’s a stretch not identifying him as a lunatic when he pulled a knife on Glen to prove he could. Also, Don shouldn’t scold her for going to school when the basis of getting to Rod in the first place. He clearly wouldn’t find him if she didn’t go that day. I even thought it was weird for Freddy to give Nancy any kind of a chance by the third where he doesn’t lay a trap after she goes past the stairs. I know he toys with his victims, but he’s taking way too long for Nancy to the point she gets a chance to stop him. And how come the broken window and shredded pillow didn’t affect the real world when it affected Tina’s night gown in the beginning? That’s a big continuity error if you ask me. Also, how the hell did Nancy hide the spare coffee pot? If Marge was able to put away all the mugs, she should’ve noticed it. I don’t know about you, but I do feel like it took way more than 20 minutes to set up the traps before going to sleep, so Don should’ve came back home way before it all went in motion. Other than that, this film is fine for what it is. In short, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a slasher classic for making you afraid to do something normal. If you’re haunted by nightmares, then this film will remind you there are worse things.
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