This document analyzes the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, summarizing how it incorporates common slasher film elements like an iconic killer (Freddy Krueger) and themes of revenge while also innovating with its surreal premise of a killer who stalks victims in their dreams. The document examines the film's narrative, themes, iconography, style, and setting, highlighting how these aspects combine the familiar with the frighteningly unfamiliar to create an enduring horror villain and establish the dream-based slasher subgenre.

1. Repertoire of Elements

2. Introduction
Dreams are the most private possession we
have. They are shared only with the ones
we love the most in life. They cannot be
stolen, tampered with or moved.
But what if they could?
A Nightmare on Elm Street answers that
question in gory detail. Its deformed,
strange killer tramples through people‟s
dreams, scares the living daylights out of
them, and then then hacks the helpless
children to pieces.

3. Narrative
This film does conform to many of the elements of a slasher
film, and in fact has set many of them in the first place. It
does, however, do one thing that most other slashers do
not. It does not conform to the unspoken rule that slasher
films must be set in a realistic setting. Although the world
is realistic, the idea of a person killing you in your sleep is
almost too surreal to work. And yet, it does. Why? All
thanks to another convention of the slasher. Most of the
genre‟s narratives come from old ghost stories, and this is
no different. In fact, this one is based on the most well
known ghost story of all. The „bogeyman,‟ that niggling
feeling every child had that there was something there
when they were alone at night, waiting in the dark for
sleep to take them. A Nightmare on Elm Street just takes
it one step further, and not just by adding a glove covered
in knives.

4. Themes
The themes follow the same pattern as other slashers, unsurprisingly.
Revenge as the killer‟s motive is still there, in this case against the
adults who set him on fire years ago. Said revenge is enacted against
the children of the town, and the mother who stole his charred knife
glove. The other present theme is the perversion of childlike innocence.
The telltale tension-raising tune seems reminiscent of a nursery rhyme,
and that iconic image of the three children playing with a skipping rope,
chanting the haunting “one two, Freddy‟s coming for you” echoes
throughout the film. However, unlike Jason Voorhees, the killer trapped
with the mind of the lonely, drowning child, the childhood innocence
here comes from the twenty or so children who suffered at Krueger's
knife-covered hand. This subverted convention makes the character
almost impossible to like, although marketing and toys completely
ruined that in later years. Interestingly, the final girl may be lacking
from this film. It ends with a cliff-hanger where every person previously
murdered was revived, and the four teenagers were driven away in a
Christine-style car whose roof bore the same red and green stripes of
the apparently defeated Freddie. Whether or not the heroine dies is up
to the viewer‟s imagination in this case, but all signs point to her
satisfyingly gory demise.

5. Iconography
Iconography is almost impossible to miss in this film. The main
ones, of course, are the villain‟s unique murder weapon, and
the red and green, tattered sweater he wears. This film seems
to lack a mask, however, but Krueger's disfigured face serves
the purpose remarkably well. He is even „unmasked‟ in one of
the dreams, as someone accidentally rips his face off, only for
him to be miraculously recovered by the next night. This
supernatural aspect to Freddy, another convention of the
genre, makes him even more frightening, as he thinks nothing
of cutting off his own fingers to demonstrate his point. It also
makes him a tougher adversary for the heroine, as he seems
nearly impossible to kill, and feels no pain. A recurring theme of
fire is also present, for instance the old boiler room where most
of the deaths take place, or the flaming finale that almost
finishes Freddy. This links the kills to the motive, and makes
sure the audience doesn‟t forget exactly why Freddy isn‟t a
person to sympathise with.

6. Style
Following the theme of dream vs. reality, style
plays a large part in this film. In every
dream scene, the music seems very
artificial, and the same track is repeated,
mirroring the surreal setting and recurring
sets respectively. This makes sure that the
audience knows that the setting has
changed (but it does occasionally wrong-
foot them a few times to increase the
tension) in order to justify the unnatural
deaths.

7. Setting
As said before, the setting is atypical for a
normal slasher. Some is set in the
normal suburban environment, whilst the
rest takes place inside the dreams of the
victims, twisted into Freddy‟s idea of a
brutal nightmare. This, although it may
at first seem out of place in the genre,
works well to frighten the audience. After
all, where else could you possibly be
more vulnerable than your own bed?