A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Part of the fun of horror movies is the opportunity they give us to face our fears and master them. Usually, we are able to conquer them with one single viewing, having exhausted all the surprises and knowing where the story takes us. Most of the great horror movies continue to unsettle us because they resonate deep within our souls and play upon our lifelong trepidations. Regardless, when we are scared, there is usually a refuge we can fall back on when things get too real, whether it be behind our own eyes, a blanket, or a relaxing night’s sleep in a comfortable bed. While A Nightmare on Elm Street is an imperfect film, it remains one of horror filmmaking’s best offerings because it is built upon a truly terrifying concept, and makes the warm bed the altar upon which the innocent are sacrificed to one of the screen’s scariest icons.
Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her friends have been having nightmares, all of which feature a mysterious figure in a striped sweater and dirty fedora attacking them with a hand-made glove featuring knives for fingers. The group begins to get picked off by the killer in their dreams, which translates into their real world death. All the while Nancy races to unravel the mystery of the killer, discovering that he is a dead child murderer named Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), and his imaginative killing spree is rooted in the children’s parents’ past.
Whether we’ve just seen something scary, or have had a tough day, most of us take solace in a good night’s rest. Nightmare posits that there is no place that you can hide from your fears, a thought that is, granted, better executed on the page than on the film’s meager budget. But although the cast is amateurish, they are a small group of teenagers that we can connect with, whose eventual deaths will have meaning. So while things can get melodramatic at times, the film succeeds immensely at drawing us into the terror of the situation — you have to sleep eventually.
A Nightmare on Elm Street could be categorized as a slasher movie, yet the body count is surprisingly low for the genre. Yet audiences never remember the film for being slow or wasting time on boring character development, since the concept is creatively terrifying, and when the blood does start flowing it definitely leaves a mark. Freddy would go on to be the true star of the Elm Street series, becoming a cartoonish shell of himself from the original. Here, he is a killer that doesn’t just want you slice you up, he wants to scare you. His weapon, the glove, isn’t a common knife or chainsaw, it’s almost a part of him. He plays with the kids’ fears like a cat toying with a mouse. He’s pure evil, a Michael Myers with a vengeful purpose and unlimited power. It’s no wonder he’s been held up to the iconic level of Dracula and Frankenstein of old.
The environments in which Freddy stalks his victims are equally part of the film’s legacy. The debate still rages on which parts of the film are real and which are dreams. Did any part of the movie actually happen? It’s difficult to say for sure, as the evidence laps from one argument to the next. It can’t be said it’s irrelevant, since the reality of the story plays a big part in the overarching theme, but it’s not enough to debunk the entire movie. Despite the logic gaps, the dream worlds of the film make terrific set pieces, from the school hallway that strangely has leaves blowing freely in the blustering wind to Freddy’s boiler room lair that could power the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno. The dreams are based in the real world of the dreamer, much like Inception, but are often entertainingly extinguishable from the boring house in the suburbs.
Where the movie is most often attacked is the strength of the performances. Nightmare was far from the first movie to follow a group of high schoolers through a horrifying crisis, but it involves us in their characters better than almost any film in the genre. The melodramatic spin that each actor puts on their character has become slightly outdated, and it’s possible that different performers might have done better in the parts. Maybe. The concept and themes of the film still endear them to us, however, especially since nobodies parents will listen to them when the bodies begin stacking up. Their hysterics are understandable, and each murder builds upon the other, creating genuine consequences for all those involved. It’s not airtight, but the effort is much appreciated.
Where the performances may be a little lackluster, the writing picks up the slack. The backstory that exposes the mystery of Freddy is genuinely creepy, as it plays upon the old-as-time “sins of the fathers” trope. Silly teenage dialogue slips into the gaps every once in a while, but Nightmare’s third act extends a courtesy to its heroes that few horror films do: it puts them into action on their own accord. Your average slasher victim usually finds themselves backed into a corner by the end, fighting back only as a last resort. In Nightmare’s final twenty minutes, a conscience effort is made by our protagonists to take the fight to Freddy, and face their fears head on. We’d rarely seen that sort of initiative in slasher films before, and haven’t seen much of it since.
Much of the film is of its time, toeing the line between classically forgivable and outdated. Made for under $2 million, the effects work is fairly impressive, all the more so because much of it was captured on set without the aid of Claymation or model work. The synthesizer score isn’t as atrocious as many 80’s films, but there are times when it detracts from the thrill of the chase. But care is taken to make the story creepy, then worry about the effects. Like its 80’s horror classic sibling film Halloween, the cinematography is a star in its own right, creating an atmosphere that is comforting in one frame, and menacing in the next.
A Nightmare on Elm Street spawned a franchise that threatened to destroy what many loved about scary movies, a consequence that its creator, Wes Craven, never wanted (his original ending was much more cut and dry and made the movie a standalone title). But the original is a true classic, a terrifying concept that built upon our deepest fears, and the need to confront them in order to move on. At a brisk ninety minutes, there is hardly a dull moment. The kills are disturbing, the concept is genius, and the monster is the stuff of nightmares.
