A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a 1987 American fantasy slasher film directed by Chuck Russell in his feature directorial debut. The story was developed by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner and is the third installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and stars Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. The film follows Nancy Thompson, now a psychiatrist, and Kristen, a patient who can bring others into her own dreams, team up with other kids to launch a daring rescue into the dreamland and save a child from Freddy Krueger.
Dream Warriors was theatrically released on February 27, 1987, and grossed $44.8 million domestically on a budget of over $4 million. It received mostly positive reviews from critics and is considered by many to be one of the best films in the Elm Street series.
The film was preceded by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) and followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988).
Plot
A year after the events of the previous film, teenager Kristen Parker dreams that Freddy Krueger is chasing her. He attacks her in her bathroom after she thinks she has already awoken, making it look like she has slit her wrist in the real world.
Believing Kristen to be suicidal, her mother admits her to Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, where she is placed under the care of Dr. Neil Gordon. At the hospital, Kristen fights the orderlies who try to sedate her because she fears falling asleep. The new intern therapist, Nancy Thompson, calms her down and befriends her by reciting part of Freddy's nursery rhyme. Nancy is introduced to the rest of Dr. Gordon's patients: Phillip, a habitual sleepwalker; Kincaid, a tough kid from the streets who is prone to violence; Jennifer, a hopeful television actress who is prone to cigarette burns; Will, who uses a wheelchair due to a prior suicide attempt; Taryn, a recovering drug addict; and Joey, the youngest, who is too traumatized to speak. One night, Freddy attacks Kristen in her dreams, but she unwittingly pulls Nancy into her dream, allowing them to escape.
Kristen reveals that she has been able to pull people into her dreams since she was young. Over the next two nights, Freddy throws Phillip off a roof and kills Jennifer by smashing her head into a television. In their next group session, Nancy reveals to the remaining patients that they are "the last of the Elm Street kids," the surviving children of those who banded together and burned Krueger to death many years ago. Both Nancy and Neil encourage them to try group hypnosis so that they can experience a shared dream and discover their dream powers. In the dream, Joey wanders off and is captured by Freddy, leaving him comatose in the real world. Nancy and Neil are relieved of duty. A nun named Sister Mary Helena tells Neil that Freddy is the son of a young woman on the hospital staff who was accidentally locked in a room with hundreds of mental patients who raped her continually. She explains that the only way to stop him is to lay his bones to rest.
He and Nancy ask her father, Officer Donald Thompson, where the bones are hidden, but he is uncooperative. Nancy rushes back to the hospital when she learns that Kristen has been sedated. Neil stays behind to convince Donald to help them. Nancy and the others again engage in group hypnosis to reunite with Kristen, but they are all separated by Freddy. Taryn and Will are killed by Freddy, while Kristen, Nancy, and Kincaid find one another. The trio rescues Joey but are unable to defeat Freddy because he has become too powerful due to the souls he has absorbed. Sensing that his remains have been found, Freddy appropriates his own skeleton and kills Donald before incapacitating Neil. Freddy returns to attack the others, but Joey uses his dream power voice to repel him. Donald tells Nancy that he is crossing over, but he is revealed to be Freddy and stabs Nancy in the stomach, tossing her aside. Freddy, believing that Nancy is dead, comes upon Kristen in order to kill her, but a still-alive Nancy stabs him with his own glove. Neil manages to recover and purifies Freddy's bones, killing him. After Nancy dies, Kristen manages to awaken everyone and return them to the real world. During Nancy's funeral, Neil finds Amanda Krueger's tombstone and discovers that she is Sister Mary Helena. That evening, he goes to sleep with the Malaysian doll Nancy gave him and Kristen's papier-mâché house nearby. Suddenly, Kristen's house lights up from the inside, suggesting that Freddy is not completely defeated.