The brilliance of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street is the sense of inevitable doom. A key component of horror movies is audience surrogacy. We see characters and project ourselves onto them, asking what we would so in those situations. Often, we feel like we could easily avoid the danger. Giant shark on the loose? Don’t go in the water. Old haunted mansion? Easy; don’t spend the weekend there. But, sooner or later, we all need to sleep. We can fight it all we want, but it is a biological need. If we don’t sleep, we will eventually die. And that is what spectral murderer Freddy Krueger is counting on to continue his reign of terror. For many people, myself included, sleep is a welcome escape from our problems and circumstances. But, in A Nightmare on Elm Street, sleep is where we are most vulnerable, and it is in being awake that we find our safety. But, of course, it’s only a matter of time…
