A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American horror film directed and written by Wes Craven and the first film in the franchise of the same name. The film features John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, Robert Englund, and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in a fictional Midwestern town, the plot revolves around several teenagers being terrorized in their nightmares before the ghost of a serial child murderer named Freddy Krueger.
Craven produced Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1.8 million, a sum the film earned back during its first week. Grossing $25.5 million at the United States box office, the film has become one of the most popular entries in the horror genre and the film’s villain “Freddy Krueger” has become one of the most well recognized villains in cinema history.
Nightmare on Elm Street’s premise is the question of where the line between dreams and reality lies. Freddy Krueger exists in the “dream world” yet can kill in the “real world.” Both critics and Craven have mentioned that the film owes some of its success to John Carpenter’s Halloween, which was hugely influential in spawning a long line of slasher films.
