Creeptober Day 6: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Few horror franchises are as influential as the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, and few movies within the franchise are as influential as Dream Warriors. This movie is the true beginning of Freddy Krueger as a pop-culture sensation thanks to its perfect combination of dark humor, big personalities, creepy moments, and a fantastical approach to horror. Those are also the reasons why we chose to include it as movie six in our Creeptober marathon!

Read on for our thoughts on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors as well as a recap of the movie, and join the conversation on our Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram!

Reacting to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is sometimes my favorite Elm Street movie. If I had to pick just one as my absolute favorite, it has to be the 1984 original. Wes Craven’s can’t be beat. But Dream Warriors is an extremely close second, and I’ve probably watched it just as many times as the original. It’s one of my top-tier comfort movies.

The opening scene is iconic. It’s been burned into my brain for decades. Part of that is likely because I first saw the movie when I was young, but it’s also because it’s an incredibly well-crafted sequence. The rebuilding of Nancy’s house using paper mache and popsicle sticks. Eating a spoonful of raw coffee and downing it with Diet Coke. The little girl who turns into a skeleton in Kristen’s arms. The sink knobs that grow claws. Kristen’s mom saying “andale.” Everything about it is fantastic.

The movie gets even better from there. I love how story explores the history of Freddy through Sister Mary Helena, but it doesn’t go too deep into explicit explanations. The tale of “the bastard son of 100 maniacs” is more of an extra layer added to a legend rather than a detailed origin story. It’s mysterious and spooky because we don’t see exactly what happened. It’s a modern folk tale that allows us to fill in the blanks on our own. Later movies in the franchise give too much away about Freddy’s origins, and that makes it less interesting in my opinion.

I also enjoy the quippy version of Freddy in Dream Warriors. He laughed and had fun in the previous two movies, but the one-liners didn’t really begin until Dream Warriors. Of course, this led to even more ridiculousness in later Elm Street movies, but Dream Warriors has the perfect balance of humor and horror.

Dream Warriors has some fantastic death scenes. My personal favorites are Phillip’s (the gory puppet strings) and Taryn (the needles). Both are unsettling, though the shot of the mouths on Taryn’s arm is probably the most unnerving moment in the entire movie. It gives me the creeps every time I see it.

And finally, I love Dream Warriors for the return of Nancy. This might be the best-ever usage of a returning final girl in any slasher movie. It really does feel like a passing of the torch from Nancy to Kristen, and from Heather Langenkamp to Patricia Arquette. Together they feel like two sides of this movie’s final girl, with neither of them overshadowing the other. And as sad as the ending is—for Nancy and for Nancy’s father played by the incredible John Saxon—I get it. As much as it pains me every time I see it, I understand the reasons for Nancy’s fate. In the end, I like to believe that the light in the model house that Kristen made is Nancy. The dream demon is gone, and something made of goodness and light has taken its place.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors – A Recap

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is set a few years after the original movie. The events taking place in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge are ignored in Dream Warriors, though they aren’t necessarily overwritten by this sequel.

The movie begins by introducing us to Kristen Parker. Kristen has been having recurring nightmares about an old house and a burned man with blades on his right hand (whom we know to be Freddy Krueger). After a particularly horrific dream that leads to what her mother believes is an attempt to kill herself, Kristen is committed to the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital.

In the hospital, Kristen meets other teenagers who are also having terrible nightmares. The doctors assigned to helping them—the helpful but clueless Dr. Neil Gordon and the by-the-book disciplinarian Dr. Elizabeth Simms—aren’t having any luck, but the arrival of Nancy Thompson changes that. Nancy, who joins the hospital staff as an intern, is the only known survivor of Freddy’s previous attacks. She determines that the group of teens currently in Westin Hills are the last of the Elm Street kids. The kids’ parents killed Freddy Krueger in life, so Freddy is killing the teens as revenge. And his revenge is nearly complete.

Freddy begins killing the teens one by one. Meanwhile, Nancy realizes that Kristin has a special ability. While asleep, Kristin can pull other people into her dreams. Nancy encourages Kristen and the rest of the teens to embrace and develop their own dream powers so that, together, they can fight back against Freddy. Nancy convinces Dr. Gordon that her approach will work, but an early attempt at group hypnosis leads to one of the teens being abducted by Freddy. With the boy seemingly in a coma (but really being held prisoner in the dream world), the patients go under the “care” of Dr. Simms. Care which includes sedation and a “good night’s sleep.” It is a death sentence, and everyone knows it.

With Nancy and Dr. Gordon relieved of their duties at the hospital, Kristen panics and is thrown into “the quiet room” where she will surely be killed by Freddy if something isn’t done. In desperation, Nancy gathers the surviving teens to attempt group hypnosis once again in hopes that Kristen and pull them all into the same dream. At the same time, Dr. Gordon enlists the aid of Nancy’s father to find Freddy’s bones and give them a proper burial which will hopefully put his spirit to rest for good. So, with a battle fought on two fronts, Nancy and her dream warriors face off with Freddy while Dr. Gordon and Mr. Thompson try to survive Freddy’s mystical attempts to protect his bodily remains in the waking world.

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