The genre of cinematic horror is adept at representing trauma and evil. As Robin Wood notes, in contrast to realist genres, “One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses, its re-emergence dramatized, as in our nightmares, as an object of horror, a matter for terror.” Horror reveals what more realist genres—including the law—hide. But what kind of stories can and should horror tell about evil and trauma? In our chapter, we explore how we might go beyond dominant, thematic readings of evil and trauma in horror films to read against the grain of films, and to discover more hidden representations of shared anxiety and fears.

At first glance, Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) is the obvious source of evil in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven conceptualized Krueger as a child killer, but the discourse of “stranger danger” that emerged in the 1980s, alongside the social fear that pedophiles were hiding in plain sight in seemingly safe suburbs, meant that Krueger also carried the weight of the monstrous figure of the molester, stalking the underage in their dreams and killing them in reality. In this paper, we argue that the film invites a reading of responsibility that goes beyond that arising from the simplistic binary of the monster/victim. Here, we explore the responsibility and culpability of people and institutions in authority, rather than of the monstrous (and exceptional) Krueger himself. We argue that law and its mechanisms are at the heart of the failure of authority, supported by other institutions, including the family—the teenage victims’ parents create the monster through an act of vigilante justice, and absolutely fail to protect their children from him.

Author Adam Rockoff has claimed that, in his earliest drafts of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven portrayed Krueger as a child molester. The author has also stated that Craven changed his mind before filming and instead characterized Krueger as a sadistic child murderer, downplaying the sexual abuse element to avoid being accused of exploiting a spate of highly publicized cases that occurred in California around the time of the film.