The land of dreams can sometimes be a scary place. Drifting off to the land of nod is usually an uneventful experience, but sometimes sweet dreams will change into terrifying nightmares, leaving you waking up in a cold sweat. Still, what happens in dreamland doesn't have real-life consequences. Unless, of course, the nightmares are happening in a horror movie.
There are plenty of examples of times dreams turned against their dreamers in horror. Whether a knife-fingered child murderer is back from beyond the grave or a sleep study goes terribly wrong, there are plenty of opportunities for a good night's sleep to become a waking nightmare.
A Nightmare On Elm Street
Probably the most well-known and influential dream-based horror is A Nightmare On Elm Street. The Wes Craven slasher was released in 1984, and at the time Craven couldn't have known the pop culture phenomenon he had on his hands. Heather Langenkamp stars as Nancy Thompson, a teenage resident of the titular Elm Street who becomes plagued by nightmares about a knife-fingered burn victim chasing down and killing her friends one by one.
Of course, Nancy's friends begin dying in real life, sliced and diced in horrible ways — and Nancy seems to be next on the list. As the plot unfolds, Nancy learns about the child-murdering Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) who was hunted and burned alive by the parents of the Elm Street children he had brutalized. The nightmare imagery in the film as well as the brutal kills and unique villain led to the Elm Street franchise enduring for decades, spawning seven sequels and one ill-fated and ill-advised remake in 2010.
Prince of Darkness
John Carpenter's 1987 film Prince of Darkness director's unofficial apocalypse trilogy, which also includes They Live and In the Mouth of Madness. The film follows a group of scientific researchers and students investigating a strange finding in the basement of a church: a giant cylindrical chamber filled with strange green goop that is exerting a strange force around those in its proximity. As the group investigates, things slowly unravel in and outside the church.
Throughout the film, members of the team have strange visions and dreams that seem to be warnings. The audience is given glimpses of these visions whenever someone sleeps, through what seems to be a shaky recording of a figure standing in the open doorway of the church. Each time someone dreams, certain words are repeated: "This is not a dream… not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver." More of the message is revealed as the film continues. The dreams are a warning from the future about the imminent rising of the Antichrist, which is actually contained within the cylinder in the basement.
Paperhouse
A little-known oddity from 1988, Paperhouse is a slow-burning and strange British film based on the novel Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. Eleven-year-old Anna is suffering from glandular fever. While sick, Anna draws a house, and when she falls asleep, she finds herself inside her drawing. When she wakes, she draws a young boy in the window of the house, and sure enough, when she dreams, she finds him there. She also finds him in real life when she wakes up.
Things take a turn for the sinister when Anna draws her absentee dad into the house. Instead of the warm family reunion she had hoped for in her dreams, he becomes a figure of fear, out to get her and terrorizing her in the paper house. Paperhouse is a visually striking film with a dark undercurrent that belies its child-friendly appearance.
Before I Wake
Before he became the master of horror miniseries on Netflix, director Mike Flanagan had made numerous other ventures into the horror genre including Hush, Oculus, and Doctor Sleep. One of his lesser-seen films from 2016 is Before I Wake, which features a family beset by the nightmare monster of their foster child's dreams. After the loss of their own son, Jessie and Mark Hobson take in Cody, a boy who has nightmares about an entity called The Canker Man. Of course, nightmares are harmless, unless dreams come to life when one is sleep.
It becomes clear soon after he arrives that what Cody dreams about can manifest in real life. Butterflies appear in their home at first, but things take a turn when the couple's dead son appears. It only gets worse as The Canker Man starts appearing to terrorize their waking life and Jessie takes a trip to the orphanage where Cody came from, only to find hallways filled with horror and remnants of Cody's life before.
Come True
2020 Canadian sci-fi horror film Come True follows troubled Sara, who has a strenuous relationship with her mother and is practically homeless. Sara is also plagued by nightmares of a maze where a figure with glowing eyes menaces her. Low on cash, Sara agrees to take part in a sleep study for money, but the consequences of this supposedly simple study soon begin spiraling out into the real world and impacting not only Sara but those around her.
She begins to see the shadowy figures in her waking life, and discovers that she is not the only one in the study that dreams of them and the maze. As the figures begin closing in on her and others, Sara is discovered to be a somnambulist, a sleepwalker, and her sleep-induced jaunts lead her and the researchers to more than anyone expected.