Sleep Tight: 5 Horror Movies Focused On Dreams
The land of dreams can sometimes be a scary place. Drifting off to the land of nod is usually an uneventful experience, but sometimes sweet dreams will change into terrifying nightmares, leaving you waking up in a cold sweat. Still, what happens in dreamland doesn't have real-life consequences. Unless, of course, the nightmares are happening in a horror movie.
There are plenty of examples of times dreams turned against their dreamers in horror. Whether a knife-fingered child murderer is back from beyond the grave or a sleep study goes terribly wrong, there are plenty of opportunities for a good night's sleep to become a waking nightmare.
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Probably the most well-known and influential dream-based horror is A Nightmare On Elm Street. The Wes Craven slasher was released in 1984, and at the time Craven couldn't have known the pop culture phenomenon he had on his hands. Heather Langenkamp stars as Nancy Thompson, a teenage resident of the titular Elm Street who becomes plagued by nightmares about a knife-fingered burn victim chasing down and killing her friends one by one.
Of course, Nancy's friends begin dying in real life, sliced and diced in horrible ways — and Nancy seems to be next on the list. As the plot unfolds, Nancy learns about the child-murdering Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) who was hunted and burned alive by the parents of the Elm Street children he had brutalized. The nightmare imagery in the film as well as the brutal kills and unique villain led to the Elm Street franchise enduring for decades, spawning seven sequels and one ill-fated and ill-advised remake in 2010.
John Carpenter's 1987 film Prince of Darkness is part of the director's
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