在几十年前，无恶不作的混混弗莱迪·克鲁格（杰基·厄尔·哈利饰）因为骚扰孩子引起众怒，他被愤怒的家长们围攻，大家将其困在了一个废弃的工厂里并把他活活烧死，虽然弗莱迪死有余辜，但大家都不愿意提及那段往事，沉默和遗忘是解决这件事的最好办法。

几十年过去了，大家本以为这件事早已风平浪静，没想到弗莱迪并未真正消亡，他觉得自己是屈死的冤魂，于是借助噩梦而重回小镇，给这座平静的小镇带来了新的危机。南茜（鲁妮·玛拉饰）就是其中的一个受害者，她的痛苦来源于一天晚上的噩梦，也就是从那天开始，她每天都会重复着这个梦境，在梦里，有一个满脸烧伤的男人面目狰狞，手指上暴露着尖锐锋利的刀锋，那个人慢慢向她靠近，目的就是把她一点点撕成碎片。随后，这个噩梦传播到镇上每个孩子的梦境中，整个小镇开始恐慌起来，而南茜为了不让梦中那个男人接近自己，她只有一个办法，逼迫自己不要睡着，必须时刻保持清醒。

Decades ago, criminal thug Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley) got into trouble for molesting children. Public outrage, he was besieged by angry parents, and everyone trapped him in an abandoned factory and burned him alive. Although Freddy was not guilty of death, no one wanted to mention the past. Silence and forgetting are the solution. The best way to do this

Decades have passed, and everyone thought that this matter had been peaceful, but Freddy did not really die, he felt He was the unjust soul who had died, so he returned to the town with the help of nightmares, bringing a new crisis to this peaceful town. Nancy (Rooney Mara) was one of the victims. Her pain came from a nightmare one night. From that day on, she repeated this dream every day. In the dream, there was a man with a burnt face. The man's face was ferocious, with sharp blades exposed on his fingers. The man slowly approached her, with the purpose of tearing her into pieces bit by bit. Afterwards, this nightmare spread to the dreams of every child in the town, and the whole town began to panic. In order to prevent the man in the dream from approaching her, Nancy had only one way to force herself not to fall asleep and to stay awake all the time. .