Sexually-promiscuous teenagers are being attacked in their dreams by a disfigured madman, causing them to be brutally murdered in the physical world. Realizing this is happening, teenager Nancy Thompson fights to stay awake and sets up “Home Alone”-styled booby traps to fight the bladed-glove wielding nightmare. Insert surface-level character building here.
It’s kind of hard to organize my thoughts right now because it’s been 7 weeks since I watched this one and I honestly felt a bit ambivalent towards it. I thought the film was genuinely creepy and I dug many of the special effects (especially the ones that played with gravity). But ultimately, I felt like the film was all fluff. The parents were all bad people, the kids weren’t great people, and Freddie was a cartoon of a villain. As is risked in any story about dreams and ‘challenging the audience to analyze what’s real and what’s fantasy’, I left this one wondering if any part of it actually mattered.