A Nightmare on Elm Street

In Springwood, Ohio, teenagers are sharing identical dreams of a burned man with a blade-tipped glove chasing them through a boiler room. Tina is the first to die — slashed to pieces in her bed by an invisible force while her boyfriend Rod watches. Nancy Thompson, Tina's best friend, begins pulling the figure into her waking moments. She learns his name is Freddy Krueger: a child murderer who was burned alive by the parents of Elm Street after he escaped conviction on a legal technicality. Nancy's alcoholic mother reveals she helped and kept Krueger's glove as a secret trophy. Nancy's friends die one by one. Determined to fight, Nancy devises a plan: she will confront Freddy in the dream, grab him, set an alarm, and drag him into the waking world where he is mortal. She does so — pulls him through, traps him, sets him on fire. He burns through the house and seems to vanish. A false happy ending follows immediately, stripped away in the final shot: Nancy gets into a car with her friends, the top snaps shut, and the car drives away on its own — Freddy is still in control, and none of it was real.