So much of what we know about Freddy comes from this film. What makes it stand apart from the others is how well developed and clearly defined the characters are. Each kid is a real person with real fears and pain. A product of their time and circumstances? There's a sadness in Dream Warriors. What could be worse than dying while vulnerable and afraid? Being violated in place where you're supposed to be safe. In an interview Wes Craven discussed being afraid to go to sleep because of recurring nightmares as a child, he begged his Mother to come with him and she said "That's the one place I can't go with you". Such a terrifying thought, to be truly alone with your thoughts, alone with an invader. Sometimes I think of Freddy as being a kind of mental illness himself, not the product of but the psychic bringer of thoughts that make us feel trapped and the things that make us self destruct. Praying on our weaknesses until they eventually kill us. In reality it happens much slower, but the ideas that made Freddy ARE real, your inner-most fears are there even though movies are fake. The truth behind Freddy is real.

This is why I'm endlessly fascinated with the series, with possibilities that stretch as far as any individual's imagination. The dream world is as expansive as ten silken galaxies which bends and conform to accommodate it's captives with only one overlord to cross. But he is moisture on the brain, he is disease, and he is inside of you.