Why is A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger so desperate to escape the dream world and become human when he has more power in the dream world, so how does the franchise explain away this plot hole? The Nightmare On Elm Street series has a uniquely powerful slasher villain whose method of killing makes him more dangerous than the likes of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. The fact that Freddy Krueger is a supernatural dream demon who can kill innocent teens in their sleep makes him harder to beat than the typical slasher antagonist, who might be indestructible but is not able to bend the rules of reality to their will.
In contrast, once each movie’s heroes fall asleep (which, crucially, everyone has to do eventually), they are liable to become Freddy’s prey. Save for the beloved sequel Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, where the titular teens learn to harness their superpowers in sleep, no one other than Freddy can manipulate the world of dreams in the series. This has given rise to a confounding plot hole throughout the franchise, but it’s one that the Nightmare On Elm Street movies does have an answer for.
At least two Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, Freddy’s Revenge and The Dream Child, see Freddy trying to use a human conduit to gain access to the real world. However, when he has complete dominion over the dream world and can kill at his leisure there, why would he want to become human – and therefore killable – all over again? The Simpsons’ ‘Treehouse of Horror’ segment “Nightmare On Evergreen Terrace” perfectly illustrated this conundrum as Groundskeeper Willy’s Freddy parody regained a human body and went after the Simpson kids—only to realize he was a hapless failure of a villain when shorn of his supernatural powers. However, the Nightmare On Elm Street movies does offer an answer to the seeming plot hole when their characters note that Freddy’s powers are limited in the dream realm.
![Nightmare On Elm Street: Freddy’s Real-World Plot Hole Solved](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/A-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-5-The-Dream-Child-Cropped-Poster.jpeg)
This, at least, would explain what the advantages of a human body would be for the dream slasher. However, this still doesn’t reveal how Freddy plans to kill with impunity once he gains a body, given how badly that went for him the first time around. The Nightmare On Elm Street villain has never been big on logical consistency throughout the series, so it stands to reason he would want a body thanks to his dreamworld limitations. Like Tinkerbell and Candyman, A Nightmare On Elm Street’s franchise bad guy relies on people believing in him to feed his power, something he would not need if he regained corporeal form.
This is not an entirely satisfying answer to the question of why Freddy is desperate to regain a living body, since he would undeniably be better off staying in the dream world. However, the franchise is (somewhat) consistent in depicting Freddy as wanting to escape his purgatorial existence despite the ease with which he can kill. In Freddy Vs Jason, the killer is even willing to revive a rival solely so he can regain the strength to kill more teens. As such, it is believable – if somewhat credulity-stretching – that the Nightmare On Elm Street antagonist would want access to the real world despite this jeopardizing his impressive killstreak.