Scenario:Teenager Tina Gray awakens from a terrifying nightmare in which a disfigured man wearing a bladed glove attacks her in a boiler room. Her mother points out the mysterious slashes on her nightgown. Tina's best friend Nancy Thompson and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen Lantz, reveal that they too had nightmares about the same disfigured man. During a sleepover at Tina's house, Tina's boyfriend, Rod Lane, arrives, and they have sex. When Tina falls asleep, she dreams of the disfigured man who attacks her; in real life, Rod sees her fatally slashed by an unseen force, forcing him to flee. Nancy and Glen find Tina bloodied and dead. Nancy's policeman father, Don Thompson, arrests Rod despite his pleas of innocence. At school, Nancy falls asleep in class and dreams that the man chases her to the boiler room. She deliberately burns her arm on a pipe, which startles her awake in class, and notices a burn mark on her arm. Nancy visits Rod at the police station, where he describes Tina's death along with his own recent nightmares about the same man. At home, Nancy falls asleep in the bathtub and is nearly drowned by the man. She then relies on caffeine to stay awake and invites Glen to watch over her as she sleeps. In her dream, she sees the man preparing to kill Rod in his cell, but he turns his attention toward her. Nancy wakes up when her alarm clock goes off. The man kills Rod, staging it as a suicide. At his funeral, Nancy's parents become worried when she describes her dreams. Her mother, Marge, takes her to a sleep disorder clinic where, in a dream, Nancy grabs the man's fedora with the name "Fred Krueger" written in it and pulls it into the real world. After barricading the house, Marge explains that Krueger was an insane child murderer who killed 20 children but was released on a technicality. He was then burned alive by the victims' parents, who sought vigilante justice. Now a vengeful ghost, Krueger is killing Nancy and her friends out of revenge and to satiate his psychopathic needs. Glen falls asleep and is killed by Krueger. Now alone, Nancy asks her father, who is across the street investigating Glen's death, to break into the house in 20 minutes. She rigs booby traps around the house and grabs Krueger out of her dream and into the real world. The booby traps allow her to light him on fire and lock him in the basement. The police arrive to find that Krueger has escaped from the basement. Nancy and Don find a burning Krueger smothering Marge in her bedroom. After Don extinguishes the fire, Krueger and Marge vanish into the bed before Krueger rises behind Nancy. Realizing that Krueger is fueled by his victims' fear, she calmly turns her back to him, and Krueger evaporates. Nancy steps outside into a foggy morning where all her friends and her mother are still alive. She gets into Glen's convertible to go to school when the top suddenly comes down (colored in green and red stripes) and locks them in as the car speeds down the street, while Marge waves them goodbye on the doorstep. Three girls in white dresses playing jump rope chant Krueger's nursery rhyme as Marge is grabbed by Krueger through the front door window. In the small town of Woodsboro, California, high school student Casey Becker is home alone when she receives a phone call from an unknown person. They discuss horror films until the caller turns sadistic, threatening her life and revealing that her boyfriend, Steve, is tied up on her patio. The caller demands she answer questions about horror films to save his life, but Casey gives an incorrect answer about Friday the 13th, resulting in Steve's death. Casey attempts to escape, but is stabbed to death by someone wearing a "Ghostface" costume, and her disemboweled corpse is found hanging from a tree by her parents. The news media descend on the town as a police investigation ensues. Casey's classmate, Sidney Prescott, struggles with the impending first anniversary of the rape and murder of her mother Maureen by Cotton Weary. The trauma has made her unable to consummate her relationship with her boyfriend, Billy Loomis. As her father Neil is traveling for work, Sidney waits at home alone for her best friend, Tatum Riley. She receives a call taunting her about Maureen's death and is attacked by Ghostface, who disappears just before Billy climbs through her window. Sidney immediately grows suspicious when he drops a cell phone, and Billy is arrested by Deputy Sheriff Dewey Riley, Tatum's brother. At the police station, Sidney is confronted by investigative journalist Gale Weathers, who wrote a book claiming that Maureen had multiple extramarital affairs, including one with Cotton, whom Gale believes was falsely accused of Maureen's homicide. Sidney stays at Tatum's home but receives another taunting call from the killer. The calls are traced to Neil's phone, but the police are unable to locate him. Following his release, Billy encounters Sidney at school and further upsets her by comparing his absent mother to Maureen's death. After suspending classes in the wake of the murders, Principal Himbry is murdered in his office. To celebrate the school's closure, Stu Macher, Tatum's boyfriend, hosts a party at his secluded home. Dewey and Gale keep watch on the party in case the killer strikes again. As fellow high schooler Randy Meeks details the rules of surviving a horror film, Tatum is isolated in the garage by Ghostface, who crushes her neck in the garage door. News arrives of Himbry's murder and most partygoers leave to see his body, nearly running over Dewey and Gale while inadvertently leading them to Neil's hidden car. Billy arrives at the house to reconcile with Sidney, and they finally have sex. Afterward, they are suddenly attacked by Ghostface, and Billy is stabbed. Sidney evades Ghostface, who kills Gale's cameraman Kenny and stabs Dewey when he returns. Gale, attempting to flee in her van, crashes and is knocked unconscious. Sidney seeks refuge inside the house, locking Stu and Randy outside as they accuse each other of being the killer. A seemingly wounded Billy returns and allows Randy inside before shooting him in the shoulder, revealing himself as the killer and Stu as his accomplice. Billy confesses they killed Maureen because the discovery of her affair with his father led to his mother abandoning him. The pair abducted Neil to frame him for their crimes and proceed to stab each other to depict themselves as the last survivors. They are interrupted by Gale's return, allowing Sidney to incapacitate Billy and kill Stu by dropping a television set on his head. Billy nearly stabs Sidney but is shot by Gale. After Randy remarks that horror film killers revive for a final scare, Billy lunges for them, but Sidney shoots him in the head, killing him. As dawn breaks, Neil is rescued, Dewey is taken away by ambulance, and Gale provides an impromptu news report about the night's events. But there's another killer that's scaring the kids and teenagers in Woodsboro named Freddy Krueger.