The Big Picture

Freddy Krueger in
A Nightmare on Elm Street
is a supernatural terror whose powers have been explained across the franchise.
The original film leaves Freddy’s abilities mysterious, making him scarier to viewers.
An entity in
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
takes the form of Freddy, creating a new twist.

The 1980s were dominated by the slasher genre, but among the silent, masked men like Michael Myers in Halloween and Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise, was the immensely popular horror killer: Freddy Krueger. Played by Robert Englund, the burnt-faced, knife-gloved murderer in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street became a pop culture icon. Freddy was something more than a slasher, but a supernatural man who talked and did more than stalk teenagers in the woods. While we didn’t know what Jason and Michael’s powers were (outside of their inability to die) – until the bizarre ’90s sequels made Jason some sort of demon worm monstrosity and The Shape controlled by a cult, Freddy’s powers were explained, although they kept changing as the sequels got more wild.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Teenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.Release Date November 16, 1984 Runtime 91 minutes Studio New Line Cinema Expand

The Original ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ Films Change Freddy Krueger’s Powers
In the original A Nightmare on Elm Street we know who Freddy Krueger is. He’s a man who killed the local children of Springwood, Ohio, but after he gets off on a technicality, the town’s parents take matters into their own hands, burning the child killer alive. His human form might be dead, but he returns, burnt and crispy, to haunt the dreams of his killers’ children. What we don’t know exactly is how Freddy is able to do this. That’s a good choice from Wes Craven, as the less you know, the more scary Freddy is. The only real explanation we get is at the end, when our final girl, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langkenamp), has a showdown with Freddy after she pulls him into her real world. In the dream world, he is king, but in our world he can be hurt and even killed. After Freddy kills Nancy’s mother, Nancy turns her back to him and says, “It’s too late Krueger, I know the secret now.” She tells Freddy this is a dream and he isn’t alive. She asks for her friends and her mother back, adding, “I take back every bit of energy I ever gave you. You’re nothing. You’re shit.” Freddy tries to attack, but he fades into nothing before he can get to Nancy.

Related The Wes Craven Horror Movie That Survived an Earthquake Wes Craven’s New Nightmare had a nightmare of its own to survive.

Freddy keeps coming back though, and coming back, and coming back, with each sequel wilder than the one before. We get more insight into Freddy’s backstory, and in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (spoiler: it wasn’t), we’re introduced to the dream demons. They are a trio of tadpole-shaped demons who came to Freddy with a deal when he was killed in his human form. They want to spread evil throughout the world, and if Freddy will do this for them, they will give him the power to kill within dreams and resurrect him whenever he dies.

‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare’ Gives Us an Entity Who Looks Like Freddy Krueger

Three years after Freddy’s Dead, he returned, sort of, in 1994’s Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare. Craven was returning to the director’s chair for the first time since the original film a decade earlier, but this one would be different. New Nightmare was meta two years before Scream, and starred Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, and Wes Craven all playing versions of their real selves. Freddy does show up, but he’s not the one we knew before, with his face looking slightly different and his razor claws now part of his flesh instead of being a glove. How can this be?

As it turns out, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise contained an ancient entity. It is now freed and taking the form of Freddy Krueger. If it kills Heather, it will be freed into the real world forever. With its defeat at the end of the film, the entity is sent back to where it came from.

Freddy Krueger Didn’t Start out as a Killer in the 2010 Reboot

In 2010, seven years after Robert Englund played Freddy for the last time in Freddy vs. Jason (not counting a fun cameo in The Goldbergs a few years back), A Nightmare on Elm Street returned in the form of a remake. You could argue that the movie’s existence is the real nightmare, but Jackie Earle Haley does the best he can with what he has to work with, playing Freddy as a more serious and sinister presence and less of a jokester.

His Freddy has one big difference from Englund’s. In the original film, Freddy Krueger is a killer of children, but in the remake he is a child molester who lets his victims live. He is still burned to death by the parents of his victims, but now he’s out for revenge by coming for the now teenaged kids he once abused. Here, his powers come from his victims’ fears and memories, and their belief in him, which is pretty close to what Wes Craven was going for in the beginning. With so many fans wanting another Nightmare on Elm Street movie, hopefully with Robert Englund coming back one last time, what will be the power that brings Freddy back next?

A Nightmare on Elm Street is currently available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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