Nightmare on Elm Street Analysis

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American horror film that is part of the sub-genre of slasher films. The film follows a group of teenagers who are killed in their dreams by Freddie Krueger, a serial killer with self-made gloves made of knives that he uses to stab his victims. The opening scene begins with us being introduced to Freddie. The scenes background music introduces the dark tone with creepy off key piano music being played. Only parts of him are shown, such as a close-up of his boots and a close-up of his hands as he grabs things. He is shown creating his gloves, hammering and crafting the knives before putting them on the gloves. The use of multiple close-up shots makes it so the audience cannot see the full picture of whats going on, as well as not revealing what Freddie looks like. This builds anticipation. We can see from his hands that he is dirty which conforms to stereotypes of killers in horror movies, being loners who don't care about their appearance or what people think of them because they are psychologically unstable. After another close-up of Freddie wearing the glove and testing it out the titles appear, which are red and bloody. This is an outdated use of titles which you don't normally see in modern horrors, as the bloody titles are now seen as a bit cliche.

After the titles we see Freddie stabbing a thin sheet with the glove and slowly ripping downwards. This is accompanied with the non-digetic sound of someone screaming out in pain.The colour of the sheet is skin-like, which makes the audience visualise the obvious connotation of Freddie stabbing his victims. This also shows the threat that he imposes. We then have another close-up of a young girl, whose expression tells us she is clearly scared. This is a perspective change in the scene so Freddie is no longer the primary focus, instead this girl is. The use of a young girl appeals to the target audience of teenagers as most horror films seek to do, so the audience can imagine themselves being in the situation and are scared more as a result of this. A long shot of the girl running down a corridor towards camera makes her seem very small compared to the creepy corridor, which makes her look more vulnerable and less powerful in comparison to her surroundings. The audience are given many shots of the girl that have a long duration, which gives her prevalence in the scene and makes us sympathise with her. The length of the shots also slows the pace of the film down to a painful grind, building anticipation of Freddie's arrival. Non-digetic cackling is heard which informs us as to Freddie's presence, as well as shots of the girl that show him in the far background or just shows the audience his shadow. 

The location of this part of the opening scene works well to set the frightening tone the film is aiming for through the lighting and atmosphere the location presents. The lighting is always kept quite dark which is a typical convention of most horror films. The location itself seems to be some kind of factory, with metal everywhere representing a dangerous environment as well as drawing comparisons with the metal knives Freddie uses. After a close up of Freddie's knives scraping against a metal pipe, we see the same shot of him stabbing a thin skin-like sheet before starting to chase the girl. We have a lengthy point of view shot showing the girl running away from Freddie's perspective. Freddie seemingly corners the young girl so she has no way out, playing on audiences fears of being trapped. When she stops screaming and opens her eyes, Freddie is gone, before he pops up behind her (still in shadow) and goes to stab her. Just then we have a genre convention displayed in many films across multiple genres as the girl wakes up in bed, showing that it was all a dream. The increasing pace of the shots returns to a normal pace and the background music stops, which juxtaposes the tension of the dream sequence with the normality of real life. The opening scene is effective at introducing our antagonist without revealing him to build anticipation for his reveal later in the film, much like Jaws opening scene does.