A Nightmare on Elm Street tells the story of a group of teenagers hunted in their dreams by a disfigured, knife-gloved killer. One of the teens, Nancy, begins to suspect that there is more to this specter. She learns that he, Freddy Krueger, is exacting revenge and will stop at nothing to murder the group, one by one. As more of her friends die and Freddy’s powers grow, Nancy’s not sure she’ll be able to stay awake long enough to stay alive.
Violent nightmare killers aside, falling asleep in the bathtub is never safe.
This world of Freddy Krueger and of A Nightmare on Elm Street are now iconic: Freddy for being a truly fun villain and the film itself for adding fantasy to the slasher genre. At its core though, Nightmare is a coming of age story. There is the fantastical villain, but the teens likewise contend with absent fathers, abusive upbringings, and alcoholic and pill-popping parents. The nightmares of their lives and of growing up do not end when they go to sleep.
With the nightmare world of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven injected an avante garde sense into the well-worn tropes of the slasher. These dreams are nuanced, gritty, and surreal, reminiscent of Repulsion (Polanski’s psychosexual prelude to Rosemary’s Baby), in which the character’s psyche affects her surroundings. In Nightmare though, it is Freddy’s psyche that affects the characters’ surroundings. Houses and household objects become vehicles of violence: walls bend to Freddy’s whim, bathtubs hide claws, and beds spew blood. It is Freddy’s nightmare world that the teens must traverse to survive.
You won’t find this type of geyser at Yellowstone.
These nightmares prove increasingly violent as well. The film uses practical effects in a truly original way, spewing blood in ways unseen on screen before. The best way to watch or rewatch this film would be on the big screen. More than anything, if there’s any way to see Johnny Depp get sucked into a bed and turned into a blood geyser, it’s on the big screen.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
1984
dir. Wes Craven
91 min.
Movie plays at Brattle Theater on June 3rd, at 8:00pm. Tickets are $11.00.
