A Nightmare on Elm Street

This is the one where falling asleep becomes the actual threat, which feels deeply unfair to anyone who already struggles with that. A group of teenagers keep having the same nightmare, and the man in it does not stay in the dream once he catches you. It is the first film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, so you do not need to know anything else about the franchise to feel every bit of it.

He is Freddy Krueger, and the reason he wants their parents to suffer through their children goes back to something those parents did to him years earlier, in the sort of mob justice that never quite stays buried. Wes Craven wrote and directed it, and Robert Englund plays him with a burnt, gleeful menace that makes your skin crawl before he has said a word.

It is proper fear, the kind that follows you to bed rather than staying on the screen, because the whole point is that you cannot simply stay awake forever. Watch it late, alone if you dare, coffee in hand and absolutely no naps beforehand.