Freddy Krueger, a child killer burned alive by the parents of Springwood, Ohio, returns as a burned man with a bladed glove who murders their teenage children in their dreams. Across the original films Nancy Thompson, Kristen Parker and Alice Johnson fight him, until his own daughter blows him up in Freddy's Dead; Wes Craven's New Nightmare moves the story into the real world, and Freddy vs. Jason ends with Jason Voorhees holding Freddy's head, which winks.
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No. 01 · 1984 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street recap
In Springwood, teenager Tina Gray dreams of a burned man in a striped sweater and a fedora who wears a glove with knife blades. The next night she is slashed to death in her sleep, thrown across the ceiling while her boyfriend Rod watches, and Rod is arrested for it. Her friend Nancy Thompson has the same dreams. Rod is killed in his cell, made to look like a suicide, and Nancy realises the man can kill them through their dreams. She stops sleeping. Her mother Marge, a heavy drinker, finally tells her the truth: the man was Fred Krueger, a child murderer freed on a technicality, and the parents of Elm Street burned him alive.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street ends
Freddy kills Nancy's boyfriend Glen, pulling him into his bed in a fountain of blood. Nancy sets booby traps, pulls Freddy out of her dream into her house and fights him, but he kills her mother. Nancy turns her back on him, taking away his power, and he vanishes. The next morning seems normal, until the car her friends are in turns into Freddy's colours and locks them in, and Freddy pulls Marge through the door window.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 02 · 1985 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge recap
Five years later, the Walsh family moves into Nancy's old house, and teenage Jesse Walsh starts having nightmares about Freddy, who wants to possess Jesse's body so he can kill in the real world. Strange things happen around the house, the family's birds explode, and Jesse finds Nancy's diary. Possessed, Jesse wanders the streets at night and Freddy, using his body, kills his gym coach and then his friend Grady. Jesse's girlfriend Lisa tries to help him. At a pool party at Lisa's house, Freddy bursts out of Jesse's body and attacks the teenagers in the real world.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge ends
Freddy, in Jesse's form, retreats to the abandoned power plant where he used to work, and Lisa follows. She tells Jesse she loves him and kisses Freddy, which gives Jesse the strength to fight back. Freddy burns up and Jesse emerges from his remains. On the school bus, Jesse's friend Kerry is torn open by Freddy's claw, and the bus drives off into a field.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 03 · 1987 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors recap
Kristen Parker, a teenager haunted by Freddy, is sent to Westin Hills psychiatric hospital after Freddy makes it look as though she slit her wrists. She joins a group of the last children of the Elm Street parents. Nancy Thompson, now a graduate student in dream research, arrives as an intern and realises what is happening, and with Dr. Neil Gordon she gives the teenagers a dream suppressant. Kristen can pull other people into her dreams, so the group learns to fight Freddy together, each with a dream power. A mysterious nun tells Neil that Freddy is the son of Amanda Krueger, a nun accidentally locked in an asylum with hundreds of maniacs, and that his bones must be buried in holy ground.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors ends
Nancy and the teenagers enter a shared dream to save Joey. Neil and Nancy's father Donald find Freddy's bones in a junkyard, and Donald is killed by the skeleton. Freddy, disguised as Nancy's father, kills Nancy, but Neil buries the bones with holy water, destroying Freddy. Kristen, Kincaid and Joey survive. At Nancy's funeral, the nun turns out to be Amanda Krueger's ghost.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 04 · 1988 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master recap
Kristen, Kincaid and Joey are out of Westin Hills. Kincaid's dog urinates fire on Freddy's grave in a dream and brings him back. Freddy kills Kincaid and Joey, then Kristen, who passes her power to pull people into dreams to her friend Alice Johnson as she dies. Freddy uses Alice to reach her friends, killing her brother Rick, the asthmatic Sheila and the fitness-obsessed Debbie, who turns into a cockroach. With each death, Alice takes on that friend's skill or strength, and she grows from a shy daydreamer into a fighter. She and her boyfriend Dan try to stay awake together.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master ends
Alice enters Freddy's dream world, a church, to face him. Remembering a children's rhyme about the dream master, she holds up a shard of mirrored glass so Freddy sees his own evil reflected, and the souls he has taken burst out of his body, tearing him apart. Alice and Dan are together at the end. The Dream Child continues with Alice.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 05 · 1989 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child recap
Alice, now graduating, begins having visions of Amanda Krueger being raped by the asylum's inmates and giving birth to Freddy. Freddy kills Dan as he drives to her, and Alice learns she is pregnant with Dan's child. Freddy has found a new way back: he is feeding the souls of his victims to the dreaming fetus, Jacob, so he can be reborn through him. He kills Alice's friends Greta, a model forced to eat herself, and Mark, a comic book fan drawn into his own comic. Alice's friend Yvonne searches the abandoned asylum for Amanda's remains, while Alice has visions of a boy who is her future son.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child ends
Alice fights Freddy inside the asylum's dream world, and Jacob, encouraged by her, rejects Freddy and turns on him, releasing the souls he has taken. Amanda Krueger's spirit absorbs Freddy back into her body as a baby, and Yvonne frees Amanda's remains. Alice gives birth to Jacob. The film ends with children skipping rope to Freddy's rhyme.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 06 · 1991 · Film
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare recap
Ten years on, Freddy has killed every child in Springwood, and the adults have lost their minds. One teenager is left alive and sent out of town: John Doe, an amnesiac who ends up at a youth shelter, where counsellor Maggie Burroughs takes him back to Springwood to find who he is. Three runaways from the shelter, Carlos, Spencer and Tracy, stow away. Freddy kills Carlos with his own hearing aid and Spencer inside a video game, and John dies after learning he is not Freddy's child. Maggie learns that she is: she is Freddy's daughter, Katherine Krueger, taken away as a child. Freddy wants to use her to escape Springwood.
How Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare ends
Maggie's dreams reveal Freddy's past: a bullied child, a killer of his wife who was then given his powers by dream demons. Maggie goes into his dream wearing 3D glasses, pulls him into the real world, where he is mortal, and fights him. She stabs him with his own glove and blows him up with a pipe bomb, ending the original series.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 07 · 1994 · Film
Wes Craven's New Nightmare recap
Ten years after the first film, actress Heather Langenkamp, who played Nancy, lives in Los Angeles with her husband Chase, a special effects artist, and their young son Dylan. She is plagued by earthquakes, nightmares and calls from a stalker who sounds like Freddy, while New Line asks her to make another Nightmare film that Wes Craven is writing. Chase is killed in a car crash with slash marks on his body. Dylan stops sleeping and begins acting strangely. Craven explains that his films had kept an ancient evil trapped; with the series over, the entity has taken Freddy's form and is now coming for Heather, the one who kept it at bay as Nancy.
How Wes Craven's New Nightmare ends
Dylan is hospitalised, and his babysitter Julie is killed. Heather, now fully playing Nancy, follows Dylan into Freddy's dream world, a hellish version of her old house. Together they push Freddy into a furnace and he burns away. Heather wakes beside Dylan and finds the script of the film she has lived through, and reads it to him as a bedtime story.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 08 · 2003 · Film · optional
Freddy vs. Jason recap
Freddy is powerless in hell because Springwood's teenagers are given the drug Hypnocil and have forgotten him. To make the town afraid again, he disguises himself as Jason Voorhees's mother and sends Jason to kill in Springwood, so people will blame Freddy. Jason kills in Lori Campbell's house on Elm Street, and Lori, her friends and her ex-boyfriend Will, who has escaped from the asylum, learn about Freddy. But Jason keeps killing teenagers Freddy wants for himself. The friends use Hypnocil to drag Jason into Freddy's domain, and in the dream world Freddy finds Jason's fear of water. Lori pulls Freddy into the real world at Camp Crystal Lake.
How Freddy vs. Jason ends
Freddy and Jason fight brutally at Crystal Lake, while Lori and Will try to finish them both. Jason rips off Freddy's arm, Freddy stabs Jason with his own machete, and Lori beheads Freddy. Both sink into the lake. Jason rises from the water holding Freddy's severed head, which winks at the camera. No sequel was made.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
No. 09 · 2010 · Film
A Nightmare on Elm Street recap
In this remake, Springwood teenagers Nancy Holbrook, Quentin Smith, Kris, Jesse and Dean dream of a burned man with a bladed glove. Dean seems to slit his own throat in a diner while his girlfriend Kris watches, and then Kris is killed in her bed. The survivors discover they all went to the same preschool and that the gardener there, Fred Krueger, abused them as children. Their parents, believing the stories, chased Krueger and burned him alive, then had the children's memories suppressed. Quentin and Nancy try to stay awake, risking micro-naps, and set out to find proof.
How A Nightmare on Elm Street ends
At the old preschool, Nancy lets herself fall asleep so she can pull Freddy into the real world, and Quentin shocks her awake with adrenaline as she grabs him. Nancy cuts off his gloved hand and slits his throat, and Quentin burns the building. At home, Freddy reaches through a mirror and kills Nancy's mother. No sequel followed.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
Common questions
What is the Nightmare on Elm Street story so far?
Freddy Krueger, a child killer burned alive by the parents of Springwood, Ohio, returns as a burned man with a bladed glove who murders their teenage children in their dreams. Across the original films Nancy Thompson, Kristen Parker and Alice Johnson fight him, until his own daughter blows him up in Freddy's Dead; Wes Craven's New Nightmare moves the story into the real world, and Freddy vs. Jason ends with Jason Voorhees holding Freddy's head, which winks.
Where did Nightmare on Elm Street leave off?
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) is the latest. At the old preschool, Nancy lets herself fall asleep so she can pull Freddy into the real world, and Quentin shocks her awake with adrenaline as she grabs him. Nancy cuts off his gloved hand and slits his throat, and Quentin burns the building. At home, Freddy reaches through a mirror and kills Nancy's mother. No sequel followed.
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