Claim: A Nightmare on Elm Street earned back its budget in its first week.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film written and directed by Wes Craven , and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise . The film stars Heather Langenkamp , John Saxon , Ronee Blakley , Amanda Wyss , Jsu Garcia , Robert Englund , and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut . The plot revolves around several teenagers who are stalked and killed in their dreams -LRB- and thus killed in reality -RRB- by Freddy Krueger . The teenagers are unaware of the cause of this strange phenomenon , but their parents hold a dark secret from long ago .   Craven filmed A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of $ 1.8 million , a sum the film earned back during its first week . The film went on to gross over $ 25 million at the United States box office . A Nightmare on Elm Street was met with rave critical reviews and went on to make a very significant impact on the horror genre , spawning a franchise consisting of a line of sequels , a television series , a crossover with Friday the 13th , beyond various other works of imitation ; a remake of the same name was released in 2010 .   The film is credited with carrying on many tropes found in low-budget horror films of the 1970s and 1980s , originating in John Carpenter 's 1978 horror film Halloween , including the morality play that revolves around sexual promiscuity in teenagers resulting in their eventual death , leading to the term `` slasher film '' . Critics and film historians state that the film 's premise is the struggle to define the distinction between dreams and reality , manifested by the lives and dreams of the teens in the film . Critics today praise the film 's ability to transgress `` the boundaries between the imaginary and real '' , toying with audience perceptions .