Craven has described Elm Street as a deliberate answer to what the slasher had become by 1984: the suburb, the babysitting teenagers, the final girl and the killer who cannot be stopped are all Carpenter's, and Craven keeps every one of them. What he changes is the one rule the form depended on. Halloween's terror requires staying awake and watching the dark; Freddy can only reach you when you sleep, which turns the survival strategy into the danger.