A Nightmare on Elm Street: Westin Hills Stories 0: Foundation
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Westin Hills Stories 0: Foundation
WESTIN HILLS STORIES 0: FOUNDATION
The nightmare begins not with a killer… but with a story.
“Before Elm Street… there was the Foundation.”
Core Concept
Logline:
At Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital decades before the Elm Street killings, an experimental “fear externalization” program has a group of young patients collaboratively invent the ultimate boogeyman to control their trauma—only to discover their fictional creation, Freddy Krueger, has begun rewriting their dreams… and their reality.
Tone & Style:
Psychological horror, meta, slow-burn. Less gore, more paranoia:
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“Is he real or are we doing this to ourselves?”
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Blurring line between story, shared hallucination, and supernatural.
Timeline & Setting
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Time: Late 1960s / early 1970s (before Freddy’s human backstory fully crystallizes, making this feel like a proto-myth).
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Place: Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, during a period of secret experimental programs (sleep labs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis).
The idea:
Freddy doesn’t start as a real person here. He starts as a therapeutic construct, then becomes something else in the dreamscape—maybe later “attaching” to the real Freddy Krueger (meta-retcon).
Main Characters
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DR. MIRIAM CHASE – 30s, idealistic psychiatrist. Wants to revolutionize trauma therapy. She designs the “Foundation” program: a shared storytelling/dream project. Slowly realizes she’s unleashed something she can’t clinically explain.
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DR. ELLIOT HARKER – 50s, director of Westin Hills. Cold, bureaucratic, but secretly fascinated with weaponizing fear & sleep research. Pushes Miriam to “go further.”
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EMMA WARD – 17, lucid dreamer, insomnia, anxiety. The most sensitive to the dream world. She becomes the first to sense that “their” boogeyman is acting on his own.
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MARK FLETCHER – 18, comic book artist, uses drawing to process trauma. He sketches the first iconic look: hat, striped sweater, glove, boiler room setting.
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TARA JONES – 16, sleepwalker. Often wakes up in dangerous places in the hospital. Becomes one of the first “accident” victims when Freddy shows up.
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LUIS ALVAREZ – 19, raised in strict religious household. Frames Freddy as a demon; his belief fuels the entity’s power.
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NEIL GORDON (Intern) – Young psych intern; easter egg for continuity. Mostly an observer, takes notes, archives tapes and drawings—crucial for the ending.
Themes
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Stories as weapons – A coping tool becomes a curse.
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Collective imagination – Freddy as a tulpa / egregore: fueled by group belief.
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Meta-horror – Patients realize they’re following horror “rules” and try to break them.
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Ethics of experimentation – How far can you push vulnerable minds in the name of progress?
Three-Act Structure
ACT I – “The Program”
1. Cold Open – The Incident (Hook)
Night at Westin Hills.
A terrified patient runs down the corridor from something unseen. Alarms. Orderlies. He’s found dead in a way that could be self-inflicted… or not. Last word he etched: “FOUNDATION.”
Cut to title.
2. Miriam’s Mission
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DR. MIRIAM CHASE is questioned by DR. HARKER and investigators about her “Foundation Group.”
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We flash back two weeks earlier as she presents the program:
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Idea: Have traumatized teens invent a shared nightmare figure to “contain” their fear.
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Patients will give it a name, rules, weakness, everything. Turn fear into a controllable story.
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3. The Group Assembles
INT. WESTIN HILLS – THERAPY ROOM – DAY
Introduce EMMA, MARK, TARA, LUIS as they bicker and bond. Miriam explains the project:
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They brainstorm generic fears: shadows, fire, knives, predators, pedophiles, crooked men, etc.
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MARK starts sketching. The group laughs as they refine the design.
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They settle on:
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Burnt skin
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Dirty fedora
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Striped sweater
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Glove with blades
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Lives in “where the boiler roars all night,” under the hospital.
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A name is floated:
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LUÍS: “Names have power.”
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EMMA accidentally whispers “Freddy…” like she’s half remembering, half inventing.
4. First Shared Dream
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Miriam introduces group hypnosis and shared dream recall.
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That night they experience similar nightmares of a dim boiler room and a half-formed man—no clear face, only the glove scraping.
They wake up shaken but impressed: “It worked.”
ACT II – “He Wakes Up”
5. Program Escalation
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Harker pressures Miriam: more sessions, deeper hypnosis, more pharmaceuticals.
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Mark refines Freddy in his sketchbook. The more defined the drawing, the more vivid the dreams.
6. Rules of the Boogeyman
Therapy exercise: the group writes rules on a chalkboard:
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He only gets you if you’re asleep.
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He feeds on fear, but jokes while he kills.
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He lives in the boiler room, but can pull you there from anywhere.
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He leaves marks that might show up in the real world.
Meta moment:
EMMA: “You’re basically making a slasher movie villain.”
MARK: “Yeah, but he’s ours.”
7. First “Death”
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TARA’s sleepwalking gets worse. Cameras catch her walking toward the boiler room at night.
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Staff finds her critically injured after a fall, covered in burns and cuts, with suspicious, glove-like wounds.
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Official report: “Accidental self-harm / fall.”
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In her last, delirious words to EMMA: “He’s real when we sleep together… He said he’s just getting started.”
8. The Meta Realization
The group notices:
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Their dreams sync in detail.
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Each night, Freddy becomes more coherent and more independent from what they’ve “written.”
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EMMA points out they’re following horror clichés:
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The skeptic dies first.
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The one who believes survives longest (for a while).
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They try to trick the “story”:
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Stay awake together
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Break patterns
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Make Freddy “nice” in stories
But the dreams keep dragging them back.
9. Miriam’s Doubt & Obsession
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Miriam listens to group tapes: sometimes they remember things she never suggested.
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She finds MARK’s early sketches don’t match their earliest dream descriptions—almost as if the dreams updated the drawings retroactively.
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Neil shows her that the audio tapes contain sounds and voices that shouldn’t be there.
ACT III – “Erase the Author”
10. The Program Shuts Down
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After another patient death, the board orders “Foundation” closed.
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Harker secretly instructs Miriam to keep going “off the books,” hinting at government interest in weaponizing fear/dreams.
11. Confronting the Meta Monster
Final group session (in the dream):
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They realize Freddy needs rules to exist. But rules can be changed.
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Plan: In their next shared dream, they will rewrite his origin and strip his power:
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He’s just a story.
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Stories end when nobody remembers.
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12. Dream Climax – Dream & Asylum Collide
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Location shifts between hospital corridors and industrial boiler hellscape.
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Freddy taunts them with lines about being “made” by them:
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“You gave me the hat.”
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“You gave me the glove.”
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“You gave me a job.”
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One by one, some vanish—not graphically, but in glitchy, reality-tearing ways, as if they’re being written out.
13. Miriam’s Sacrifice
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EMMA and MIRIAM realize the only way to unmake him is to erase the story’s foundation:
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Destroy tapes, files, drawings, records.
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Destroy their own memories of him in the dream.
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In the dream, Miriam confronts Freddy in his lair:
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She begins to rewrite the rules aloud:
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“You are a treatment exercise.”
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“You never left this room.”
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“You die when I open my eyes.”
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She “burns” the chalkboard of his rules in the dream.
Reality: Miriam awakens from a coma-like trance. The remaining kids remember nothing of “Foundation.”
14. Epilogue – The Foundation Survives
Years later.
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NEIL, now older, in a storage room, is boxing up old Westin Hills records.
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He finds:
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MARK’s Freddy sketches.
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Early audio tapes labeled “FOUNDATION.”
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As he plays one, we faintly hear the scrape of claws. He pauses, unnerved.
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Final image: A close-up of the tape spinning. Somewhere, distant children scream with laughter, then fear.
Cut to black. Freddy’s laugh.
Sample Screenplay Pages (Opening)
FADE IN:
First Group Session
1) First Shared Dream – “The Half-Made Man”
Context: After the first Foundation session where they invent Freddy and name him, Miriam does a group relaxation / light hypnosis. They don’t expect much. That night they all have the same basic dream.
Location & Visual Logic:
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Starts in Westin Hills hallway at night.
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The floor tiles slowly turn dark and greasy.
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The overhead lights stretch taller, humming like industrial pipes.
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A low rumble becomes the boiler roar, without any visible boiler yet.
Beats:
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Emma’s POV walking the empty corridor. Her bare feet splash in water but when she looks down, it’s boiler-room condensation on metal grates instead of hospital linoleum.
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She passes doors labeled with different patient names—but each name changes to “FOUNDATION” as she looks back.
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At the end of the hall is a DOOR that shouldn’t exist in the hospital: rusty, with a small circular window pulsing orange light.
She opens it. Steam bursts out.
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Inside is a proto-boiler room:
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Some walls are still hospital plaster, other parts are raw brick and pipes.
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A single CATWALK that ends in midair, like an unfinished level in a video game.
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Soft SCREECH of metal on metal. We never see a full figure—just quick cuts:
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A fedora brim in silhouette.
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A sleeve of a striped sweater.
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The idea of a burned cheek in close-up, but blurred.
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Meta Surreal Touch:
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Emma notices a whiteboard standing in the boiler room, floating slightly above the grated floor. Written on it in dream-chalk are the same words from the real group session: HUMAN, TALL, BURNED, GLOVE, BOILER ROOM.
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Every time she reads a word, that trait sharpens on the unseen figure in her peripheral vision.
Sample Dialogue:
Emma calls out into the dark.
EMMA
(echoing)
This is a dream. You’re just… you’re homework.
A voice behind her, close but unseen:
FREDDY (O.S.)
Homework?
(chuckles)
Kid, I’m more like… extra credit.
She spins: nothing there. The glove’s shadow passes across the whiteboard, and next to BOILER ROOM another word scratches itself in:
FREDDY (V.O.)
“Boiler room under Westin Hills.”
You really did all the hard work for me.
We don’t fully reveal him yet. Emma wakes up gasping.
2) Tara’s Fatal Dreamwalk – “Foundation Corridor”
Context: Tara’s sleepwalking is getting worse. They put cameras in the hall. In reality she’s just walking the corridor. In her dream, it’s something else.
Location & Visual Logic:
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The Westin Hills corridor. Institutional green walls and glass panels.
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The EXIT signs begin rearranging themselves letter by letter as she passes.
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Fire alarms stretch longer and longer, like melted plastic wax.
Beats:
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Tara walks past a NURSE STATION. In the dream it’s empty, the computers flashing static. The monitors occasionally show her own live feed in the corridor from above, slightly delayed.
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The floor slopes down almost imperceptibly at first.
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The EXIT sign at the end of the hall flickers between: EXIT / EXI / EX / FOU / FOUND / FOUNDATION.
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At each door she passes, a metal glove scrape inside the door. She speeds up.
Meta Surreal Touch:
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The WALLS begin to peel, revealing red brick and steam piping behind them—like set walls ripped open.
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On one wall, Tara sees a giant storyboard panel: sketches of her walking, falling, screaming, in rough comic-book style. Mark’s art, exaggerated.
In the last panel, her body is crumpled at the bottom of an unseen shaft.
TARA
(panicked)
No. Nope. Timeline’s not locked. I’m not doing this scene.
She tries to turn back—now the hallway behind her is gone, replaced by a narrow metal walkway. She’s already in the boiler room infrastructure.
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At the far end, Freddy is only a shadow at first—his hat defined, the rest a swirl of darkness. The glove scrapes along the railing, sparks without contact.
Sample Dialogue:
FREDDY (O.S.)
You kids are cute. Think you can just… rewrite me?
TARA
You’re just an exercise. You’re exposure therapy.
FREDDY (O.S.)
(mock offended)
Oh, I’m exposure, alright.
He steps closer; we still keep his face mostly obscured by shadow and steam.
FREDDY
You made the rules. I just… follow the script.
She looks down: the metal grate walkway drops into endless darkness. Below, faintly, she sees hospital beds, flailing patients, a whirlpool of bodies.
Her foot slips—because the storyboard panel on the wall updates itself: now showing her mid-fall.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
See? You drew this.
He flicks his glove. The panel changes to the final image: her broken body. She falls.
SMASH CUT to real world: she topples over a safety railing in the hospital stairwell. “Accident.”
3) “Writers’ Room” Nightmare – Rules Turn Against Them
Context: After Tara’s death, the group is terrified. Miriam asks them to change Freddy’s rules in therapy—a desperate attempt to weaken him. That night, they dream of the therapy room itself.
Location & Visual Logic:
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The therapy circle. But outside the window is boiler flame instead of daylight.
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The whiteboard floats, unanchored.
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Everyone’s chairs are bolted to the floor in a ring.
Beats:
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The group finds themselves seated, mid-discussion, unable to stand.
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The whiteboard writes by itself in red chalk:
RULES OF FREDDY:
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ONLY IN DREAMS.
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FEEDS ON FEAR.
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LIVES UNDER WESTIN HILLS.
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Emma tries to erase a rule. The eraser smears the words like blood that won’t clean off.
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Luis produces a BIBLE in his lap, tries to recite verses, but the text inside is replaced with screenplay formatting:
“INT. WESTIN HILLS – DREAM – NIGHT
LUIS prays. It doesn’t work.”
Meta Surreal Touch:
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The ceiling tiles flip one by one into script pages, all with scene headings like “DREAM SEQUENCE #3” and parentheticals describing their emotions.
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As each person speaks, their line appears on the ceiling before they say it.
Sample Dialogue:
MARK
(reading the ceiling)
“MARK (panicking): We’re not in a dream, we’re in a… rewrite.”
(looks around)
Okay, yeah, that’s… that’s messed up.
The door to the room opens itself. Freddy enters like a director walking onto set, slow clap.
FREDDY
Wow. Therapy’s gotten creative since my day.
He taps the whiteboard with his glove; the rules flicker and rearrange:
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“ONLY IN DREAMS” becomes “MOSTLY IN DREAMS.”
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“FEEDS ON FEAR” becomes “FEEDS ON FUN.”
FREDDY (CONT’D)
You don’t change the rules, kiddies.
You just… punch up the dialogue.
He walks around behind their chairs. Every time he passes, their restraints tighten.
EMMA
We made you. We can unmake you.
FREDDY
(leaning in, intimate)
You think every story belongs to its writer?
Wait till you meet the audience.
He snaps his fingers; one of the script pages falls from the ceiling and wraps around Mark’s face like plastic, smothering him. Mark claws it away and wakes up for real, in his bed, gasping—with shredded paper in his hands.
The page reads: “END OF MARK (POSSIBLE ALT: SURVIVES).”
4) Miriam’s Personal Nightmare – “Observation Loop”
Context: Miriam is still convinced this is psychological, but the evidence is piling up. For the first time, Freddy targets her, entering the dreams of the doctor, not just the kids.
Location & Visual Logic:
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The Westin Hills OBSERVATION ROOM with a one-way mirror.
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Beyond the glass: the group in endless looped sessions, repeating the same lines.
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Tapes spin on dozens of reel-to-reel machines, forming a maze.
Beats:
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Miriam stands alone in the observation room. On the other side of the glass, we see the kids and herself—but they’re replaying old sessions on a loop, like a recording.
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Every time “Dream Miriam” says “Stories are containers that hold the bad things,” the reel-to-reel machines spin faster, grinding and screeching.
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Miriam tries to leave the observation booth, but every door opens into another observation booth watching a slightly different version of the same session.
Meta Surreal Touch:
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Each loop changes one small detail:
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In one, there’s no Tara.
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In another, Mark’s sketch is already fully Freddy from the start.
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In another, the chalkboard says A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: DRAFT 1.
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Eventually, in one of the loops, Freddy is sitting in Miriam’s chair, leading the group like a therapist.
FREDDY (ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GLASS)
Today we’re gonna talk about boundaries.
Specifically, how you idiots didn’t give me any.
He scribbles on the whiteboard: “TRANSPERSONAL NIGHTMARE ENTITY (PROUD PARENT)”.
Sample Dialogue:
Miriam slams her fist on the glass.
MIRIAM
This isn’t real. You are not real.
He turns, as if hearing her through a movie screen.
FREDDY
(mocking her clinical tone)
“Patients may experience vivid hallucinations as part of the exposure process.”
Sound familiar, doc?
He stands, crosses the room, and leans into the glass directly in front of her. Except now it’s no longer a mirror—it’s a thin membrane.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
You didn’t just give me kids.
You gave me context.
That’s how you turn a monster into a movement.
He presses his glove into the glass. The mirror surface begins to blister and melt like skin. One blade pokes through on Miriam’s side.
She wakes up in her office chair to the sound of an old tape clicking off—Freddy’s laugh faintly heard on the tape.
5) Final Shared Dream – “Erasing the Author”
Context: The climactic attempt to unmake Freddy by rewriting his rules and burning the Foundation of his story.
Location & Visual Logic:
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A hybrid space: half THERAPY ROOM, half BOILER ROOM.
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Chalkboards everywhere, floating; tape machines suspended in midair like constellations.
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Scripts and sketchbook pages flutter like birds.
Beats:
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Emma, Mark (if alive), Luis, and Miriam arrive together, lucid and aware.
Each of them holds something:
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Emma: a piece of chalk.
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Mark: the original sketchbook.
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Luis: a Bible that alternates between scripture and screenplay.
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Miriam: a handful of cassette tapes.
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Overhead, the ceiling is a night sky of pages, each labeled “Scene 1, Scene 2…” etc.—their lives as written scenes.
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Freddy appears from a TEAR in reality; he literally slices open the air and steps through, trailing film strips.
Meta Surreal Touch:
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As they speak, their words appear as subtitles in the air. Sometimes there’s a discrepancy between what they say and what the subtitles claim, showing Freddy trying to control the narrative.
Sample Dialogue & Action:
EMMA
We’re done playing by your rules.
She writes on the chalkboard: “FREDDY = STORY. STORIES CAN END.”
The words flicker, glitch, but stay.
FREDDY
(wry)
Oh, sure. Roll credits. Fade to black.
You ever seen a sequel, sweetheart?
He snaps his fingers—some chalkboards shatter like glass, reforms into his glove blades.
Miriam steps forward.
MIRIAM
You exist because there are records.
Names. Rules. Origins.
I’m your… mother.
Freddy tilts his head, amused.
FREDDY
(soft, almost fond)
Mommy issues. Classic horror.
Miriam starts smashing cassette tapes against the floor. With each break:
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Part of the boiler room disappears.
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A kill moment rewinds, plays backward, or erases like burned film.
Mark opens the sketchbook to Freddy’s most iconic image. It begins to animate on the page, trying to climb out.
MARK
No more panels. No more sequels.
He tears out the page. It bleeds. They throw it into a furnace that’s also a film projector. The image projects on the wall, burns, curls, disappears.
Freddy staggers, pieces of him flaking off as paper ash.
FREDDY
You think you’re writing the ending.
(laughs weakly)
You’re just writing the origin story.
Emma grabs the chalkboard and rewrites:
“HE ONLY EXISTED IN THIS ROOM.”
The whole world outside the immediate circle goes black, leaving them in a spotlight.
Miriam realizes the cost: to truly erase him, the creators have to forget he ever existed.
MIRIAM
If no one remembers the story…
it can’t tell itself.
She steps into the furnace/projector, clutching the remaining tapes, letting herself burn in dream-logic—not gory, but turning into loose pages that disintegrate.
Freddy screams as he and Miriam both shred into flying paper. The word FREDDY on every page burns away, leaving only blank sheets.
Emma wakes up in the hospital, with no memory of the Foundation program.
II. Full Treatment – A Nightmare on Elm Street: Westin Hills Stories 6 – Foundation
ACT I – The Experiment
Cold Open:
In 1969-70, at Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, a teen patient runs through the nighttime halls, terror in his eyes, pursued by something unseen. Lights flicker in sequence behind him. He slams against a locked door; unseen claws drag toward him in shadow. We CUT TO his body in the morgue. Dr. Miriam Chase and Director Elliot Harker observe. The boy’s arm bears a jagged word carved into his flesh: FOUNDATION.
Set-Up: Miriam & the Foundation Project
We jump back two weeks. Dr. Miriam Chase, an ambitious psychiatrist, pitches an experimental group therapy program called The Foundation Project. Her idea: traumatized teens will collectively invent a single “container” for their fear—a shared nightmare figure with strict rules. By giving fear a name and form, they can confront and control it.
Harker approves, but with an unnerving enthusiasm, hinting at interest from shadowy research divisions into sleep, suggestion, and behavioral conditioning.
Introducing the Teens:
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Emma Ward – anxious, insomniac, prone to vivid nightmares and possible lucid dreaming.
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Mark Fletcher – withdrawn, expresses himself through comics and horror sketches.
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Tara Jones – chronic sleepwalker, rebellious streak.
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Luis Alvarez – sees his experiences through a religious/demonic lens, hyperaware of “evil.”
They bond uneasily in their first session. Miriam explains that they’ll build a monster together. She emphasizes control: they’ll decide its traits, rules, and weaknesses.
Creating Freddy
In their first session, the teens brainstorm fears. As Miriam writes descriptors on the whiteboard, Mark sketches a figure to match:
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Human, but burned and wrong.
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Tall, looming.
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Wears a hat, something ordinary made sinister.
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A glove with blades instead of fingers.
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Home: the boiler room beneath Westin Hills.
As they refine him, Emma, staring at the sketch, almost entranced, whispers: “Freddy.” She can’t say why. Luis warns that names have power. With some reluctance, Miriam writes FREDDY on the board.
The lights flicker.
First Shared Dream
That night, the teens each experience a dream in which they wander the hospital and slip into an unfinished boiler room space. Each sees flashes of a half-formed man. Crucially, they remember similar details in the morning. In group, their descriptions line up too well for coincidence.
Miriam is thrilled—they’ve achieved a shared symbolic construct across separate minds. Harker, briefed later, is intrigued: “Imagine what we could induce in less cooperative subjects.”
ACT II – When the Story Fights Back
Escalation of the Program
Harker pressures Miriam to deepen the experiment: more frequent sessions, stronger sedatives, group hypnosis, and eventually sleep-lab monitoring. Miriam, torn between ethics and professional ambition, agrees.
The Foundation group continues to refine Freddy’s mythology in “safe” exercises:
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They define his rules (only in dreams, feeds on fear, lives under Westin Hills, leaves marks that might show up in reality).
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They joke about horror clichés, referencing movies and monster tropes. Emma calls him “our own slasher.”
Mark’s sketchbook evolves from vague figure to fully recognizable Freddy. Each update he makes seems to retroactively appear in their dreams, or vice versa.
Tara’s Decline & “Accident”
Tara’s sleepwalking worsens. Cameras are set up in the hall. In her subjective experience, she dreams of walking through a morphing corridor that turns into a factory-like shaft (“Foundation Corridor”). She sees storyboard panels of herself dying.
In reality, she falls from a hospital stairwell, discovered with unusual burn-like abrasions and parallel lacerations suggesting claw marks. Official report: tragic accident, sleepwalker’s fall.
In group, the others reveal that they all dreamt of Tara in a boiler-like setting that same night. Emma suspects their “story” is dictating real events. Luis is convinced they’ve summoned a demon. Mark blames himself for “drawing it too well.”
Miriam, shaken, clings to rational explanations—suggestion, contagion of imagery. But the evidence starts to slip beyond her control: strange audio anomalies on tapes, patients knowing details they shouldn’t, recurring sound of a metal glove scraping.
The Writers’ Room Nightmare
The teens experience a shared dream of the therapy room turned into a writers’ room / meta theater. Rules appear on the whiteboard; script pages float from the ceiling. Freddy arrives like a smirking director, manipulating their rules. He “edits” their reality by changing words on the board (“ONLY IN DREAMS” → “MOSTLY IN DREAMS”).
They wake up with physical remnants: shredded paper, chalk dust. The line between dream and waking world erodes.
Miriam’s Moral Crisis
Miriam’s personal life deteriorates under the strain. She replays session tapes late at night, noticing that sometimes voices answer questions she never asked, or there’s a second, low laugh layered underneath the kids’. In a terrifying personal nightmare (“Observation Loop”), she sees loops of her sessions with Freddy in her place, mocking her clinical language.
She begins to accept that something is happening beyond simple psychology—but she still frames it in terms of mass psychosis, group delusion, and the power of belief. If they imagined him into existence, perhaps they can imagine him out.
Harker’s Agenda
As deaths and incidents mount, the hospital board demands the Foundation project be shut down. Harker outwardly complies but privately urges Miriam to continue “off the books.” He hints that if she can prove a method to externally induce shared fears or hallucinations, it could secure funding and prestige for them both.
Miriam balks. The kids are terrified. Emma insists that Freddy is adapting, becoming less like their creation and more like an independent entity that knows it’s fictional—and refuses to be cancelled.
More Nightmares, More Loss
We can insert at least one more victim here—another member of the group or a peripheral patient—taken out through a dream scenario that reflects their fear and Freddy’s sarcastic personality. The remaining group members become desperate.
Emma proposes something radical: instead of just reacting, they use their awareness of horror tropes to attack the story structure itself. They’re in a genre; they’ll break the genre.
They decide: next time they’re together in the dream, they’ll change the rules.
ACT III – Erasing the Foundation
The Plan: Rewrite the Monster
Miriam, now fully involved, leads a final off-the-books hypnosis session. She tells them: Freddy exists because they defined him. If they redefine him—a failed experiment, a figure that never truly escaped their minds—they might weaken or erase him.
She collects Mark’s sketchbook, the tapes, and therapeutic notes, planning to destroy them after the session. Neil Gordon, a young intern, is present taking notes, a mostly silent observer.
They fall under.
Final Dream Arena
They awaken in a composite dream space: half therapy room, half boiler room, reality stitched together by scripts and chalkboards (“Erasing the Author” sequence). The rules of Freddy are written all around them.
They enact their plan:
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Emma writes new rules that define Freddy as “only a story, never real, confined to this experiment.”
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Mark tries to destroy the original drawings by burning them in a dream furnace/projector.
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Luis tries to bind the entity with ritual and scripture, treating him as a demon whose name can be banished.
Freddy, however, pushes back. He mocks their efforts, using meta-commentary to undercut them: horror never truly ends, monsters always come back, sequels are inevitable. The more they fight, the more it feels like a classic “final girl vs monster” setup—exactly what they’re trying to avoid.
Miriam’s Realization & Sacrifice
Miriam finally understands: Freddy’s existence is tied not only to the kids’ imagination, but to documentation—the clinical notes, tapes, sketches, even the memory of the experiment’s name. The more defined his story is, the more durable he becomes.
To truly unmake him, they must erase the Foundation: records and recollection.
In the dream, Miriam gathers tapes, pages, and even the chalkboard rules into her arms. She steps toward the burning furnace/projector, knowing that she must also give up her own memory of him—possibly her life.
She says goodbye to the kids, promising that when they wake up, they won’t remember this nightmare, or her worst mistake.
Freddy, staggering as parts of his body flake away with every artifact destroyed, sneers that erasing him only makes him more mythic. Stories whispered in the dark don’t need evidence. He hints that someday, somewhere else, he’ll find a different anchor—someone named Freddy Krueger, perhaps, or some other darkness on Elm Street.
Miriam steps into the flames, her form dissolving into fluttering blank pages. Freddy howls as his name burns off every remaining page; his figure unravels into ash and empty space.
Aftermath – Waking World
Emma, Mark, Luis awaken in their beds, disoriented, with partial memory loss. They remember fragments of the Foundation program as “a failed group therapy trial” that didn’t go anywhere. Their nightmares seem to recede. They recall Miriam, but not clearly; her final sessions are hazy.
Officially, Miriam has suffered a breakdown or “accident” tied to overwork. Harker quietly tidies the records, ordering files boxed, tapes stored and forgotten in the hospital basement. The Foundation project is buried.
Epilogue – The Seed of a Legend
Years later—late 70s/early 80s—Neil Gordon, now older, sorts through Westin Hills archives. He finds a dusty box labeled FOUNDATION and inside:
-
Old cassette tapes with Miriam’s voice.
-
Mark’s early sketches of a burned man with a fedora and a glove.
-
Session notes referencing “shared nightmare construct – code name: Freddy.”
Neil plays one tape. Static, Miriam’s voice, the kids describing their monster… and beneath it, faint, a familiar scraping laugh.
Neil shivers, stops the tape, and sets it aside as “unusable, too damaged.”
We pull back from the archive room. On the shelf behind him are other files labeled with program names, including early references to dream studies and Elm Street kids—planting continuity with the wider Nightmare mythos.
As we fade out, the tape we just saw lights up in the darkness, its reels spinning on their own. A final, clear chuckle:
FREDDY (V.O.)
You can’t kill what you created...
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
Roll title: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET:
WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
Numbered Beat Sheet
ACT I – THE FOUNDATION
1. Cold Open – The Incident
At night, a terrified teen PATIENT runs down a Westin Hills corridor from an unseen pursuer; the environment briefly morphs into a boiler-like nightmare. He’s later found dead, arm carved with the word FOUNDATION. In the morgue, HARKER presses MIRIAM to explain what “Foundation” is.
2. Title Card
Smash to title: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION.
3. Flashback Setup – Miriam’s Pitch
Two weeks earlier: MIRIAM presents The Foundation Project to HARKER and the board—an experimental group therapy where teens collaboratively invent a single nightmare figure to “contain” their fears. Harker approves, hinting at interest from unnamed “agencies.”
4. Emma in Her Room – Sleep-Problem Intro
In her small room, EMMA stares at the ceiling, surrounded by books and scribbled notes about insomnia and dreams. A nurse calls her to a new group. Emma’s sarcasm and exhaustion establish her as the smart, sleepless protagonist.
5. First Group – Introductions & Dynamics
In the therapy room, Miriam brings together EMMA, MARK, TARA, and LUIS. We see their personalities clash and spark: Emma’s guarded wit, Mark’s artistic detachment, Tara’s restless sarcasm, Luis’s religious tension.
6. First Monster-Building Session – Blueprint of Freddy
Miriam leads them in designing a shared “container” for their fear: tall, burned, human-ish, wears a hat, homemade glove with blades, lives in the boiler room under Westin Hills. EMMA blurts out the name “Freddy” without knowing why. The lights flicker as the name is written on the board.
7. Emma & Mark – Rooftop Bonding
On the fenced rooftop rec area, Emma and Mark talk about being “clinically imaginative.” They compare nightmares and wonder if the experiment might actually help. Mark sketches Emma jokingly as “queen” of the place—unnoticed, a tiny hat shape appears in the drawing’s corner.
8. Tara & Emma – Common Room Banter
In the common room, EMMA and TARA play cards. Tara jokes about being an “unkillable main character” despite her sleepwalking. Emma warns her not to joke about dying. Subtle foreshadowing: Tara’s risk and bravado.
9. Day-to-Day Westin Hills Montage (Optional)
Quick glimpses of the teens’ routines: meds line, bland meals, TV room, nighttime checks, establishing the institutional monotony that the dream life will rupture.
10. Neil Observes – Early Convergence
In the observation booth, NEIL watches a Foundation group session while monitoring EEG readings. He notes how quickly their imagery is converging compared to typical studies. On tape, faint metallic scraping becomes just audible under the kids’ voices.
11. First Shared Dream – Half-Made Freddy
EMMA’s POV: she walks a hospital corridor that warps into an unfinished boiler space. A floating whiteboard displays their words; as she reads traits, a half-formed Freddy takes shape in shadow. She hears his voice for the first time—sarcastic, self-aware—before waking in a panic.
12. Morning Debrief – “We All Dreamed It”
In the next group session, the kids compare nightmares and realize the same corridor/boiler imagery appeared for all of them. Miriam is thrilled at the apparent success; the teens are spooked yet intrigued by the idea of a shared “character.”
13. Sleep Lab Setup – Escalation Begins
Harker encourages Miriam to deepen the experiment: add EEGs, mild sedatives, group hypnosis. Miriam rationalizes the risks—controlled environment, observation by Neil—and agrees, despite a flicker of unease.
14. Hypnosis + Dreams Montage
Short sequences: Miriam guiding them into trance, machines humming, flashes of boiler imagery, hats on shadowy figures, gloved fingers tapping railings. Their descriptions in follow-up sessions become more detailed and consistent.
15. Extra Group Session – Writing Freddy’s Rules
In a focused “rules session,” the group formalizes lore: Freddy only acts when targets are asleep, feeds on fear, is stronger when multiple people dream of him, lives under Westin Hills, and may be weakened by waking up or disbelief. They list “no name, no thought” as a theoretical weakness, ironically after naming and obsessing over him.
16. Luis Objects – Demonic Language
During that rules session, LUIS frames Freddy like a demon: invited through naming and fear. He warns them not to “give evil a house and an address,” sowing early spiritual anxiety.
17. Neil’s Anomaly Notes
Back in the booth, Neil listens to session recordings. He hears faint scraping and laughter that shouldn’t be on tape. He watches as all four kids subtly flinch at the same unseen trigger. He notes “SYNCHRONOUS RESPONSE / POSSIBLE ANOMALY” with growing unease.
18. Tara’s Pre-Death Character Beat
In another everyday moment, Tara again jokes about being “a liability” and a “first issue” character that can’t be cancelled. Her sleepwalking is discussed as dangerous but manageable. The audience feels a bond with her before what’s coming.
19. Hospital Precautions – Cameras & Notes
Miriam requests extra precautions for Tara—door alarms, cameras—after continued sleepwalking. Administration agrees reluctantly, mostly for liability reasons, not out of care.
20. Short Scares (Optional Beat Cluster)
Brief solo nightmares for Emma, Mark, Luis—hints of Freddy’s voice and presence, but not full set pieces yet. These keep tension rising before the first big death.
ACT II – WHEN THE STORY BITES BACK
21. Tara’s Fatal Dreamwalk – “Foundation Corridor”
TARA sleepwalks in real corridors while, in her dream, the hallway tilts and morphs into an industrial catwalk over a vortex of beds and bodies. Storyboard-style panels on the wall show her destined fall. Freddy appears as a shadow at the far end, taunting her about “following the script.” She plunges in the dream—and in reality, falls down a stairwell and dies, with injuries resembling burns and claw marks.
22. Staff Room – “Accident” Narrative
In the staff room, nurses and orderlies trade rumors about Tara’s fall. MIRIAM pushes to see the stairwell footage but learns Harker has already pulled it “for review.” Staff quietly blame lack of sitters and admin cost-cutting.
23. Hospital Report – Official Cover Story
Miriam reads the typed incident report, full of hedging language like “apparently” and “self-inflicted fall.” She recognizes that the language is being shaped to protect the hospital, not to find the truth.
24. Group Reaction – Shock & Guilt
In a grief-laden group session, Emma, Mark, Luis confront Tara’s death. Some blame the hospital, some the program, some themselves. They hint that each dreamed of her on a catwalk the night she died. Miriam tries to steer them toward “shared psychosis” explanations.
25. Luis in the Chapel – Guilt & Anger
LUIS prays alone in the hospital chapel, convinced they invited a demonic presence. EMMA joins him, arguing for psychological explanations. A subtle metal scrape from behind the altar and a fleeting Freddy-shaped shadow in the crucifix hint he’s feeding on Luis’s belief.
26. Harker’s Office – Ethics Clash #1
MIRIAM confronts HARKER about the security footage and program risk. Harker puts the Foundation Project “on hold” officially, but hints strongly that he wants her to continue collecting data off the record. He frames the death as “one unfortunate incident” in pursuit of groundbreaking discovery.
27. Kids Fracture – Blame & Belief
Back in the therapy room, one chair empty for Tara, the kids fight: Luis insists the monster is real and they all helped call it; Mark rejects supernatural explanations but secretly fears his art; Emma begs Miriam to confirm it’s all just therapy gone wrong. Luis storms out, declaring he won’t feed the monster anymore. Behind them, the whiteboard writes “FOUNDATION” by itself.
28. Neil’s Growing Suspicion
Neil reviews more tapes alone, noticing more anomalous sounds and occasional visual glitches (suggestive shapes, extra figures in reflections). He logs a “subjective visual anomaly” and debates whether to bring it up formally or risk being dismissed.
29. Writers’ Room Dream – Meta Rules Turned Against Them
Emma, Mark, and Luis (if present in dream) share a nightmare of the therapy room turned into a meta writers’ room: script pages on the ceiling, their dialogue pre-written above them, rules changing themselves on the whiteboard. Freddy enters as a smirking “director,” alters rule text (“ONLY IN DREAMS” → “MOSTLY IN DREAMS”), and nearly suffocates Mark with a script page before Mark wakes holding torn paper.
30. Miriam’s Observation Loop Nightmare
Miriam dreams she’s in the observation booth, watching loops of sessions where details are wrong: different kids missing, Freddy leading the group instead of her, the whiteboard labeled “A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET – DRAFT 1.” Freddy addresses her through the glass, mimicking her clinical language and pressing his glove through the mirror barrier, making her realize she’s now a target too.
31. Miriam Admits It’s Beyond “Normal”
Shaken, Miriam listens to tapes again and hears Freddy’s laugh under the kids’ voices. Her rational framework cracks; she reluctantly suspects they’ve created something that behaves as if it has its own will—whether psychological or not.
32. Luis’ Nightmare – Demon in His Language
Luis dreams of a church that mutates into a boiler room. Freddy sits in the confessional, speaking in Spanish, mocking Luis’s faith, turning his rosary beads into tiny razor-gloves. Freddy demands Luis say his name; religious symbols twist into Freddy imagery. Luis wakes with faint marks on his palm.
33. Mark’s Nightmare – Comics Turn Against Him
Mark finds himself inside a black-and-white comic made from his life and the boiler room images. Freddy steps between panels, treating Mark’s fate like alternate endings. Mark tries to erase Freddy with a giant pencil, only to realize Freddy is now “canon.” By shoving an early rough sketch over Freddy’s face, Mark momentarily regresses him, then wakes to find his Freddy drawings smudged.
34. Second Harker/Miriam Confrontation – Agencies & Ambition
In Harker’s office again, Miriam argues the project may be harming the kids and must truly end. Harker doubles down: their findings could be revolutionary for fear research and other “applications,” and he pressures her to continue quietly. He frames stopping now as wasting their one chance at a career-defining discovery.
35. Neil as Confidant (Optional)
Miriam tentatively shares some anomalies with NEIL—synchronized reactions, odd noises on tape. Neil confirms he’s noticed but is wary of sounding unscientific. They agree something is happening that doesn’t fit the literature, whether or not it’s “real.”
36. Decision to Fight Back – Plan to Rewrite
Miriam brings the core kids together (Emma, Mark, Luis if he returns) and admits the project has gone too far. Emma suggests using their knowledge of stories and horror tropes to attack the narrative itself: change the rules, end the story. They decide on one final, controlled dream where they will rewrite Freddy’s nature and destroy all records afterward.
37. Gathering the Evidence – Physical Anchors of Freddy
Miriam collects everything: session tapes, written notes, Mark’s sketchbook, whiteboard photos. She treats these as Freddy’s anchors—proof that “story + record = existence.” She tells Neil to stand by and document only surface vitals during their final session.
ACT III – ERASING THE FOUNDATION
38. Pre-Final Session – Stakes & Goodbyes
Before hypnosis, Miriam warns the kids the session could be dangerous but necessary. Emma wants an end; Mark is terrified of losing art that has become part of him; Luis fears “killing” a demon might only make it madder. They agree to go in together, lucid and ready.
39. Final Hypnosis – Entering the Hybrid Arena
In the therapy room, under Miriam’s guidance, they drift off together. The room soft-dissolves into the surreal hybrid space: half therapy circle, half boiler room, surrounded by floating chalkboards, tapes, and script pages.
40. Final Dream Arena – Confronting Freddy as a Story
Emma, Mark, Luis, and Miriam arrive with their symbolic tools (chalk, sketchbook, rosary/Bible, tapes). Emma writes “FREDDY = STORY. STORIES CAN END” on a board; Mark throws sketches into a furnace/projector; Luis attempts to banish him via prayer, which appears as text and is sliced apart by Freddy.
41. Freddy Fights the Rewrite – Meta Power Struggle
Freddy emerges slicing open the air, making quips about sequels, branding, and audiences. He alters rules on the chalkboards, mocks their attempts to define his weaknesses, and treats the world like his stage. Every tape Miriam breaks and page Mark burns causes parts of Freddy and the boiler world to glitch and crumble.
42. Miriam’s Sacrifice – “Erase the Author”
Miriam realizes Freddy’s continued existence depends on both documentation and memory. To truly unmake him, the founders must forget him. She gathers the remaining tapes and steps into the furnace/projector herself, transforming into a storm of blank pages that wipe Freddy’s name off every script and rule. She tells the kids they’ll forget all this—and her worst mistake.
43. Freddy’s Unraveling – Origin, Not End (His View)
As Miriam and the records burn away, Freddy disintegrates into ash and shredded text, insisting they’re only writing his “origin story” and he’ll find another way, another place, another Freddy. His voice stretches and cuts off as his name vanishes from every page.
44. White Void – Memory Collapse
The hybrid space empties into a white void; Emma, Mark, Luis feel their memories fog, struggling to recall what they came to fight. Their surroundings fade completely—
AFTERMATH & EPILOGUE
45. Emma Wakes – Faded Program
Emma wakes in her bed, feeling lighter but confused, with only a vague recollection of “some weird group therapy that didn’t go anywhere.” Her notebook has cryptic fragments that no longer connect clearly to Freddy.
46. Mark’s Sketchbook – Missing Monster
Mark flips through his sketchbook. Pages where Freddy once appeared are smudged or blank, though there are odd scorch marks or deep impressions where something was erased. He struggles to remember what he used to draw that scared him.
47. Luis’ Quiet Relief and Doubt
Luis prays in the chapel again, feeling a burden lifted but unable to name it. His rosary is normal; his palm shows only faint, healed indentations he can’t quite explain.
48. Miriam’s Fate – Sanitized Explanation
Staff gossip quietly about Miriam having some kind of breakdown or leaving under vague “personal circumstances.” Harker files internal reports that downplay her involvement. Officially, the Foundation Project becomes a failed pilot written off in internal memos.
49. Harker Shelves the Foundation Files
Harker sees to it that the physical FOUNDATION materials—notes, tapes, sketches—are boxed and sent to long-term storage. He’s disappointed but keeps an eye on other dream-study efforts and Elm Street-related programs, hinting the research will continue under different names.
50. Years Later – Neil in the Archive
Late 70s/early 80s: NEIL, now older, combs through the dusty hospital archive basement. He finds a box labeled “FOUNDATION – CHASE, M.” Inside: session tapes, notes, and Mark’s Freddy sketches. He’s unsettled but mostly curious.
51. Playing the Tape – Echoes of Freddy
Neil plays a tape; he hears young voices describing a dream figure and Miriam’s clinical narration. Underneath, a faint scraping, then the hint of a nasty chuckle. Disturbed, he labels the tape “UNUSABLE – DAMAGED” and tosses it back in the box.
52. Box on the Shelf – Seed of a Legend
Neil shelves the FOUNDATION box among others labeled with early dream and Elm Street programs. The lights go off, leaving the basement in darkness.
53. Final Audio – The Monster Still in the Static
In the dark, we hear a tape whirr to life inside the Foundation box on its own. Freddy’s voice emerges from the static—“You can’t kill what you created…” followed by his chilling laugh.
54. Smash to Black – End
Cut to black on the laugh, implying that the Foundation myth, though erased from conscious memory, still lives in the records and will eventually merge with the larger Freddy Krueger legend.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET:
WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
Feature Screenplay (Condensed Draft)
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
Screenplay by [Kalifornia Jani - Jani Apukka]
FADE IN:
INT. WESTIN HILLS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL - CORRIDOR - NIGHT (1969)
Fluorescent lights HUM overhead. Long, glossy linoleum stretches into darkness.
Red EXIT SIGNS glow at both ends of the hall.
A YOUNG PATIENT (17, hospital gown, barefoot) RUNS toward us, panic in his eyes.
YOUNG PATIENT
He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s --
He GLANCES BACK over his shoulder.
HIS POV: The corridor behind him is empty. Doors, windows, humming lights.
Nothing there.
He SLAMS into a LOCKED DOOR. RATTLES the handle. POUNDS.
YOUNG PATIENT (CONT’D)
HEY! OPEN THE DOOR! PLEASE!
No answer. His breath comes in ragged gasps.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights begin to FLICKER, one by one, starting at the
far end and rippling toward him as if something invisible is passing beneath them.
The boy looks up, transfixed.
The HUM deepens into a LOW RUMBLE.
He steps back from the door, shaking.
YOUNG PATIENT (CONT’D)
You’re not real. You’re not real.
A faint METALLIC SCRAPE echoes from somewhere behind him.
SCRAAAAAPE.
He FLINCHES, hands clamped over his ears.
YOUNG PATIENT (CONT’D)
Stop. Stop. You’re not real...
He backs away, feet SLAPPING the floor.
His heel lands in a SHALLOW PUDDLE that shouldn’t be there.
He looks down—
The linoleum has become WET METAL GRATING, steam rising between the bars.
He looks up. The walls at the end of the corridor WARBLE, the paint peeling
away to reveal RED BRICK and EXPOSED PIPES underneath.
The EXIT SIGN above the door at the far end flickers:
EXIT → EXI → EX → FOU → FOUND → FOUNDATION
He stares, horrified.
Four elongated SHADOWS stretch along the corridor floor toward him, ending in
the SILHOUETTE of a MAN in a FEDORA.
The shape of one arm is wrong. LONG, THIN BLADES glint in the shadow.
The boy SCREAMS —
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - MORGUE - LATER
Silence. Harsh overhead lights.
A BODY BAG on a metal gurney. A MED TECH pulls the ZIPPER closed over the
YOUNG PATIENT’S FACE.
Reveal DR. MIRIAM CHASE (32). Sharp features, dark hair pulled back,
eyes that have seen too many charts and not enough sleep. She looks shaken.
Across from her stands DR. ELLIOT HARKER (55). Immaculate suit, immaculate
calm. Hospital director. Clipboard in hand.
HARKER
The report will list this as
self-inflicted trauma. Another
tragic incident.
MIRIAM
He carved something into his arm
before he died.
Harker nods to the MED TECH, who unzips the bag, rolling back the sheet to
reveal the boy’s FOREARM.
Carved in ragged, bloody strokes:
F O U N D A T I O N
Miriam swallows.
HARKER
He was part of your pilot program,
wasn’t he?
MIRIAM
(guilt all over her)
Yes. He was in my group.
Harker studies her, unreadable.
HARKER
Then perhaps, Dr. Chase, you’d
better start from the beginning.
CLOSE ON Miriam’s face, haunted.
CUT TO:
TITLE CARD:
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET:
WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
INT. WESTIN HILLS - CONFERENCE ROOM - DAY (TWO WEEKS EARLIER)
A small, windowless room. PROJECTOR humming. Charts on a screen:
“TRAUMA,” “NIGHTMARES,” “GROUP COGNITIVE THERAPY.”
MIRIAM stands at the front, pointing with a pen. Behind her, slides show
scribbled patient drawings of monsters, fire, hands, dark corridors.
At the table: HARKER and TWO HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATORS (40s–60s).
MIRIAM
Teen patients in long-term care
often present with recurring
nightmares. Each one unique.
Fragmented. Difficult to treat
systematically.
She clicks to a new slide: a cluster of drawings all labeled “MONSTER,”
“SHADOW,” “IT.”
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
My proposal is to create a shared
construct. A single, contained
figure that can hold their fears.
A story they control.
ADMIN #1 peers over his glasses.
ADMIN #1
You want them to... make a monster.
MIRIAM
I want them to make a character.
With rules. With limits. Something
we can map and manipulate in
therapy.
She clicks again: a flow chart labeled “FOUNDATION PROJECT.”
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
We call it the Foundation Project.
We build a foundation for the fear
together. Then we rebuild around it.
ADMIN #2 flips through a printed packet.
ADMIN #2
And what are the risks?
MIRIAM
Elevated anxiety, vivid dreams,
temporary spikes in symptom
severity. All things we already
see here every day.
Harker steeples his fingers, intrigued.
HARKER
And the potential upside?
MIRIAM
If we can contain their nightmare
content within a shared narrative,
we can help them confront it in
group sessions. Test different
outcomes. It’s less... amorphous.
He leans forward.
HARKER
And if you could reliably induce
and control specific nightmares—
He catches himself, smiles thinly.
HARKER (CONT’D)
—you might have something quite
publishable.
Admin #1 shrugs.
ADMIN #1
We’re a hospital, not a lab.
HARKER
We’re both.
He looks to Miriam.
HARKER (CONT’D)
Restricted pilot approval. Small
cohort. Minimal expense.
(to admins)
I’ll oversee it personally.
The admins nod, unconvinced but resigned.
HARKER (CONT’D)
(to Miriam)
Congratulations, Dr. Chase. You
have your monsters.
Miriam exhales, relief mixed with a ripple of unease.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - EMMA’S ROOM - DAY
A small, sterile room with a narrow bed. Bars on the window. A WALL CLOCK
ticks loudly.
EMMA WARD (17) lies on her back, eyes open. Pale, dark circles, hair a bit
wild. Her gaze is sharp, not dull.
On the nightstand: dog-eared paperbacks (horror, fantasy), a notebook filled
with dense scribbles.
The door opens. NURSE CATHY (40s, practical, kind) peers in, holding a clipboard.
NURSE CATHY
Emma? New group in ten, sweetheart.
EMMA
(without looking)
Which one? "Tell us your trauma"
or "this pill will fix you"?
NURSE CATHY
Dr. Chase’s experiment. The
special invite club.
Emma finally rolls her head to look at her.
EMMA
That sounds suspiciously like
"guinea pigs."
NURSE CATHY
Please. Guinea pigs don’t get
chairs. You get chairs.
Emma snorts despite herself.
EMMA
Living the dream.
She swings her legs off the bed, stands, a little unsteady.
She stops at the nightstand, rips a PAGE from her notebook, glances at the
scrawled line: “CAN’T SLEEP, IT KNOWS WHEN I DO.”
She crumples the page, tosses it into the trash.
NURSE CATHY
C’mon. Before they send the
big nurse.
Emma follows her out.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - THERAPY ROOM - DAY
A generic therapy room: circle of plastic chairs, a WHITEBOARD on a stand,
faded motivational posters (“HEALING IS A JOURNEY”).
MIRIAM arranges files on a small table.
The door opens. NURSE CATHY leads EMMA in.
MARK FLETCHER (18), messy hair, hoodie, sits slouched in a chair, sketchbook
and pencil in hand.
TARA JONES (16), wiry, restless, taps her foot like a motor.
LUIS ALVAREZ (19), tense, rosary on his wrist, sits ramrod straight, as far
from everyone as the circle allows.
MIRIAM
Emma, thank you for joining us.
Go ahead and grab a seat.
Emma sits, eyes flitting from person to person, instantly sizing them up.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
This is a closed group. That means
what we share in here stays in
here. No gossip on the ward, no
late-night ghost stories, agreed?
TARA
Does that include the crazy?
MIRIAM
(gentle)
Especially the crazy.
A little ripple of reluctant amusement.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
I’m Dr. Miriam Chase. You’ve all
met me individually. This is the
first meeting of something I’m
calling the Foundation Project.
She writes the title on the whiteboard in neat letters:
"THE FOUNDATION PROJECT."
LUIS
Sounds like a charity.
MARK
"For just five dollars a month,
you too can sponsor a deeply
disturbed teenager."
He sketches as he talks. Emma smirks.
EMMA
Do we get t-shirts?
MIRIAM
You get a chance to understand
something that’s been hurting you.
She underlines “FOUNDATION.”
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Each of you has nightmares. Recurring,
persistent, disruptive.
The kids shift uncomfortably.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Different shapes. Different rules.
Right now they’re all separate,
all over the place.
She draws a bunch of jagged circles on the board.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
What if we put them in one place?
She draws a big circle around the others.
TARA
A nightmare storage unit. Great.
EMMA
Like dumping all your trash in
one can so it doesn’t stink up
the rest of the house.
MIRIAM
Exactly. A container. A story.
She caps the marker, faces them.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Today, we’re going to build
something together. Someone.
A character who lives in your
nightmares and nowhere else.
Luis stiffens.
LUIS
My priest says you don’t invite
evil in. That’s how it gets you.
MARK
Maybe we invite it in and then
we slam the door on its foot.
TARA
You draw really weird cartoons
of it and it dies of embarrassment.
Miriam smiles, letting them riff.
MIRIAM
You already have monsters, whether
you invited them or not. This way,
we write the rules.
She turns back to the board and draws a BLANK HUMAN OUTLINE.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Let’s start simple. Shape?
A beat.
EMMA
Human. Mostly.
TARA
Tall. So you see him even if you
don’t want to.
LUIS
Burned. Like he’s been somewhere
he shouldn’t come back from.
Miriam writes: HUMAN. TALL. BURNED.
Mark’s pencil scratches briskly on his sketchbook.
MIRIAM
Clothes?
MARK
Ordinary. Work clothes. But wrong.
EMMA
A hat. Like a fedora. But gross.
MIRIAM
Hat. Work clothes.
She adds “HAT” to the board.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Hands?
TARA
Claws.
MARK
(dismissive)
Come on. We can do better than
generic claws.
He draws a hand with a GLOVE, metal blades extending from the fingers.
MARK (CONT’D)
He made it himself. Like a hobby.
Or a job.
Emma leans over to see.
EMMA
That’s... actually kinda perfect.
LUIS
Where does he live?
EMMA
Somewhere hot. Loud. Like the
boiler.
TARA
Under this place.
Everyone glances down at the floor.
Miriam writes: “BOILER ROOM – UNDER WESTIN HILLS.”
MIRIAM
Good. Now he needs a name.
Silence.
Luis shakes his head.
LUIS
Names call things.
Mark taps his pencil against his knee.
Emma stares at his drawing, brow furrowed, eyes almost dilated.
CLOSE ON the sketch: a rough humanoid figure, hat brim, suggestion of stripes.
EMMA
(soft, half-dazed)
Freddy.
All eyes on her.
MARK
Why Freddy?
Emma blinks, coming back to herself.
EMMA
I... don’t know. It just... fits.
Luis makes the sign of the cross.
LUIS
Names have power.
Miriam hesitates, then writes on the whiteboard in big, clear letters:
F R E D D Y
She underlines it.
The overhead lights FLICKER, BUZZ.
Tara looks up uneasily.
TARA
Yeah, that’s not ominous at all.
ON THE WHITEBOARD: the name FREDDY, solid and undeniable.
CUT TO:
EXT. WESTIN HILLS - ROOFTOP RECREATION AREA - LATE AFTERNOON
A fenced-off section of flat rooftop. A few bolted-down benches, a sad
basketball hoop. Beyond the fence, SPRINGWOOD spreads out under a hazy sky.
EMMA sits on a concrete ledge near the fence, knees hugged to her chest,
looking at the town like it’s another planet.
MARK leans against the chain-link, sketchbook open, pencil moving.
An ORDERLY (30s, bored) leans near the access door, smoking and half-watching.
MARK
You know if you stare long enough,
you can almost pretend you’re not
in a psych ward.
EMMA
You just ruined it by saying
"psych ward."
MARK
Sorry. "Academy for the clinically
imaginative."
Emma smirks, can’t help it.
EMMA
That’s... not terrible.
Mark glances at her, then looks back to his page.
MARK
What did you see? First dream.
EMMA
Who says I had one?
MARK
You’ve got "I didn’t sleep at all"
written all over your face.
She sighs.
EMMA
Corridor. Boiler room that isn’t
there. Whiteboard with our words
on it. Voice I didn’t like.
MARK
Same whiteboard?
EMMA
Same words. Different handwriting.
She picks at a loose thread on her sleeve.
EMMA (CONT’D)
Sounds stupid out loud.
MARK
You’re talking to the guy who
sees monsters in ceiling stains.
He flips his sketchbook around.
A quick sketch: Emma on the rooftop, a lopsided crown over her head.
MARK (CONT’D)
Behold. Queen of the Academy for
the Clinically Imaginative.
EMMA
(deadpan)
Wow. I look tired.
MARK
I draw what I see.
A beat. Emma looks back out over town.
EMMA
What if this works?
MARK
The monster-making thing?
EMMA
The idea that if we put everything
in one place... maybe it stops
leaking into everything else.
Mark thinks, nods a little.
MARK
If it works, I’m out of material.
EMMA
You can draw normal people stuff.
MARK
That’s horror, too.
They share a small, real laugh.
On the sketchbook page, in the corner of the rooftop drawing, a tiny FEDORA
shape has appeared near Emma’s feet—an absent-minded addition Mark doesn’t
realize he made.
The ORDERLY stubs out his cigarette, glances at them, bored, goes back inside.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - COMMON ROOM - DAY
A shabby room with a TV playing a daytime talk show. Patients linger,
some watching, some staring off.
EMMA and TARA sit at a small table, playing cards. Tara’s leg bounces
restlessly beneath.
TARA
So what’s your damage?
Emma raises an eyebrow.
EMMA
Subtle.
TARA
It’s a psych ward. We all got
something. I told you mine.
EMMA
You said, "I’m fun at parties."
TARA
And I sleepwalk. Apparently I
almost climbed into the laundry
chute last year. It’s in my file:
"liability."
She says it mockingly, but it stings.
EMMA
That... sounds dangerous.
TARA
Nurse Cathy says if I die, at
least the paperwork will be
interesting.
Emma doesn’t laugh.
EMMA
Don’t joke about that.
Tara softens.
TARA
Look, I’m unkillable. I’m like
Issue #1 of a comic. They don’t
cancel you after the first issue.
EMMA
Not unless the writer’s really
mean.
TARA
I’d be a good main character.
EMMA
Yeah. You would.
The TV behind them flickers. For an instant, the image distorts—static in
the vague shape of a HAT and a KNIFE-LIKE HAND.
Neither of them sees it.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - OBSERVATION BOOTH - DAY
A narrow booth with a one-way mirror looking into the THERAPY ROOM.
In the therapy room beyond, the group sits in their chairs, talking. MIRIAM
stands by the whiteboard.
NEIL GORDON (mid-20s, earnest, grad-student energy) sits wearing HEADPHONES,
clipboard in his lap. Reels spin on a TAPE MACHINE beside him. An EEG MONITOR
shows multiple lines of brain activity from a previous sleep session.
MIRIAM (O.S.)
Okay. Ground rules. What can’t
he do?
TARA (O.S.)
He can’t read minds.
MARK (O.S.)
Boring. Give him something.
EMMA (O.S.)
He can’t be everywhere at once.
He needs us asleep. Together.
Neil scribbles: "SHARED CONTENT – SUBJECT-GENERATED."
He rewinds a TAPE a little, hits play.
ON TAPE: the faint hiss of room tone, then:
EMMA (TAPE V.O.)
I saw the whiteboard in the dream.
MIRIAM (TAPE V.O.)
That’s good. You’re using the
tools.
Underneath, just at the edge of hearing, a thin METALLIC SCRAPE.
Neil frowns. Adjusts the volume, leans closer.
SCRAAAAAPE. Followed by a faint, almost-voice-like rumble.
Neil takes the headphones off, unsettled.
Through the glass, he watches the group. Miriam writes on the board.
The kids talk over each other.
All at once, ALL FOUR teens flinch, as if reacting to the same unseen noise.
Neil clocks that, glances at the EEG trace. Makes a note:
"SYNCHRONOUS RESPONSE – NO EXTERNAL STIMULUS?"
The observation booth door opens quietly behind him.
HARKER steps in.
HARKER
Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.
Neil jumps, then relaxes.
NEIL
It’s okay. Just... listening back.
Harker looks through the glass at the kids.
HARKER
How’s our little experiment?
NEIL
They’re definitely converging
on shared imagery. Faster than
the literature suggests.
HARKER
Excellent.
He pats Neil’s shoulder, not really looking at him.
HARKER (CONT’D)
Make good notes. We may have
something worth publishing.
Harker leaves.
Neil watches the group again. For a split-second, in the REFLECTION on the
glass, it looks like there’s a FIFTH FIGURE standing behind Miriam’s chair.
Neil BLINKS. It’s gone.
He flips to a clean page on his clipboard and writes, small:
"SUBJECTIVE VISUAL ANOMALY?"
He underlines it twice.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - THERAPY ROOM - DAY
The group in session again. The whiteboard now has "FREDDY" and several traits
listed beneath.
MIRIAM
Today, I want to talk about rules.
She writes “RULES” in big letters.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
How does he work? What can he do?
What can’t he do?
TARA
He only comes when you’re asleep.
LUIS
No. He can be in the room first.
Watching. Waiting.
EMMA
But he can’t... actually touch
you until you fall asleep.
Miriam distills it on the board:
"ONLY ACTIVE WHEN TARGET IS ASLEEP."
MIRIAM
What does he want?
MARK
Fun.
They all look at him.
MARK (CONT’D)
He likes it. The chase. The fear.
EMMA
He feeds on it.
LUIS
Like a demon.
Miriam writes: "FEEDS ON FEAR."
MIRIAM
Can he be anywhere?
EMMA
No. He needs your dream to get
there.
TARA
But our dreams can... overlap.
We’ve all seen the boiler.
LUIS
So if we all dream at once—
He trails off, uneasy.
EMMA
Maybe he’s stronger.
Miriam adds: "STRONGER WITH MULTIPLE DREAMERS."
MIRIAM
Weaknesses?
Silence. The kids glance at each other.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Every monster has one. That’s part
of the container. It can’t just
be endless.
MARK
People stop believing in him.
EMMA
Wake up before he gets you.
LUIS
Don’t say his name.
TARA
Don’t think about him.
MARK
Good luck with that.
Miriam writes:
"WEAKNESSES:
- WAKING.
- LACK OF BELIEF.
- NO NAME / NO THOUGHT."
Emma stares at the board, disturbed by how real it already feels.
MIRIAM
So as long as you’re awake,
and you don’t believe in him, and
you don’t think about him—
TARA
That’s like telling us not to
picture a pink elephant.
MARK
Or telling us not to picture a
burned guy in a hat.
They all picture it anyway. We see it in their faces.
On the board, the name FREDDY seems somehow darker than the other text.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - EMMA’S ROOM - NIGHT
Dark. The ticking clock. Emma lies in bed, eyes shut, not relaxed.
The ticking of the clock SLOWS... deepens... morphs into a RHYTHMIC CLANGING.
Emma’s eyelids twitch.
MATCH CUT TO:
INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR - DREAM
Emma walks barefoot down the corridor. This time it’s EMPTY and TOO LONG,
the perspective stretched.
Her FOOT SPLASHES into a puddle. She looks down: WET METAL GRATING. Steam
rises around her ankles.
She looks up. Half the walls are hospital green. The other half have peeled
back, revealing RED BRICK and CHITTERING PIPES.
Doors line the hall. Each nameplate reads a patient’s name.
She passes: WARD, EMMA.
The next: JONES, TARA.
As she walks by, JONES, TARA flickers → FOUNDATION.
She stops, goes back. All the nameplates now read: "FOUNDATION."
A distant LOW RUMBLE builds—like a massive BOILER coming online.
At the far end: a RUSTED METAL DOOR that doesn’t belong in this building.
A round PORTHOLE glows orange.
Emma, drawn, walks toward it.
EMMA
(to herself)
It’s a dream. It’s just a dream.
She reaches for the handle. Opens it.
STEAM BLASTS OUT, enveloping her.
TO:
INT. UNFINISHED BOILER ROOM - DREAM
A half-constructed industrial nightmare. Catwalks end in midair, half-built.
Some walls are bare brick, others still hospital plaster.
In the middle of the room, just standing there, a WHITEBOARD glows faintly.
Emma approaches it.
ON THE WHITEBOARD: the same words from group: HUMAN, TALL, BURNED, HAT, GLOVE,
BOILER ROOM.
She reaches out, touches the word "HAT."
Something moves above, heavy footsteps on metal.
EMMA
This is therapy. This is just...
homework.
A low CHUCKLE behind her.
FREDDY (O.S.)
Homework?
Emma freezes.
FREDDY (O.S.) (CONT’D)
Kid, I’m more like... extra credit.
She spins around.
No one there. Just shadows. Pipes. Catwalks.
A SHADOW falls across the whiteboard: the brim of a FEDORA, the outline of a
shoulder.
New letters SCRATCH themselves onto the board beneath “BOILER ROOM”:
"UNDER WESTIN HILLS."
Emma backs away.
HIGH ABOVE, on a catwalk, we glimpse fragments: a BOOT, a STRIPED SLEEVE,
a burned, half-formed profile.
EMMA
You’re not finished. You’re not
real.
FREDDY (O.S.)
Not finished?
A METAL GLOVE hand CLINKS along a railing, sparks falling.
FREDDY (O.S.) (CONT’D)
Hey, *you* wrote the draft.
The SHADOW HAND stretches toward her on the floor, fingers elongated.
FREDDY (O.S.) (CONT’D)
Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m a
fast read.
The SHADOW HAND LUNGES at her.
Emma SCREAMS—
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. EMMA’S ROOM - NIGHT
Emma SHOCKS awake in bed, gasping, drenched in sweat.
The clock ticks normally on the wall.
She throws back the covers, checks her feet. Clean. No metal grate. Just floor.
She grabs her notebook from the nightstand, scribbles frantically:
"BOILER / WHITEBOARD / VOICE"
She underlines VOICE three times, hand shaking.
FADE OUT.
FADE IN:
INT. EMMA’S ROOM - MORNING
Weak daylight filters through the barred window.
Emma lies awake, staring at the ceiling, notebook open on her chest. The words
“BOILER / WHITEBOARD / VOICE” are scribbled large. Under “VOICE,” three shaky
underlines.
A KNOCK at the door.
NURSE CATHY (O.S.)
Group time, Emma.
Emma closes the notebook, slides it under her pillow.
EMMA
Yeah. Coming.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - THERAPY ROOM - MORNING
Same room, same circle of chairs. The whiteboard still bears “FREDDY” and
some traits, slightly smudged.
MIRIAM sits, not standing this time, trying to emphasize safety. EMMA, MARK,
TARA, and LUIS occupy their usual chairs.
MIRIAM
I want to check in after last
night. Any dreams?
They glance at each other. No one wants to go first.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Remember: the point isn’t to
impress or scare anyone. It’s to
notice patterns.
Emma exhales, raises her hand slightly.
EMMA
Corridor. Too long. All the
doors said "Foundation."
Luis looks up sharply.
LUIS
Mine too.
TARA
Yeah.
All eyes on her.
TARA (CONT’D)
I mean, my hallway looked normal.
For here. But the exit sign kept...
changing.
MARK
How?
TARA
Like my brain was glitching.
EXIT, EX, FOU, whatever.
LUIS
(quiet)
FOUNDATION.
Tara nods, uneasy.
EMMA
There was a door that doesn’t
exist. At the end of the hall.
MARK
Rusty. Round window. Orange light?
Emma and Luis both stare at him.
EMMA
You saw it too.
LUIS
So did I.
Miriam flips subtly to a new page on her clipboard, scribbles something.
MIRIAM
And what was behind the door?
Emma hesitates.
EMMA
Boiler room. Sort of. Like if the
hospital was... melting into it.
LUIS
I was on the stairs. But I could
hear something below. Pipes. Fire.
TARA
I was in my room. Floor got hot.
I didn’t open the door.
She says that last part like a point of pride.
MARK
I was... nowhere.
They look at him.
MARK (CONT’D)
I woke up. Looked at the ceiling
and thought, "Okay, they’re going
to ask you what you saw," and
there was just... nothing.
EMMA
That’s not creepy at all.
MIRIAM
Emma, in your dream... did you
see our friend?
She nods at the whiteboard, at the name.
Emma swallows.
EMMA
Not fully. Just... pieces. Boot.
Glove. Shadow on the board.
MIRIAM
Did he talk?
EMMA
(hesitates)
Yeah.
MIRIAM
About what?
EMMA
About... homework.
She feels ridiculous as she says it.
EMMA (CONT’D)
He called himself "extra credit."
Tara snorts a nervous laugh. Luis doesn’t.
LUIS
That’s not funny.
MARK
It’s a little funny.
LUIS
It means he’s not just sitting
where we left him. He’s... moving.
Miriam leans in slightly.
MIRIAM
What it means is that your minds
are picking up the idea and
elaborating on it. That’s what
minds do. That’s what we *wanted*
them to do.
EMMA
You wanted him to talk?
MIRIAM
I wanted you to feel like the
story had... texture. So we could
work with it.
Luis crosses himself.
LUIS
You gave it a mouth.
Mark chews his lip, then shrugs.
MARK
I mean, if we’re going to do this,
we might as well commit.
EMMA
Says the guy who gets to watch
from behind his sketchbook.
MARK
I’m not sleeping any better than
you are.
Miriam senses the tension.
MIRIAM
Okay. Let’s slow this down.
You’re describing very similar
dream elements after a single
session. That’s... impressive.
TARA
Is that the clinical term? "Impressive"?
MIRIAM
It means you’re responding to the
treatment. But I don’t want to
push your brains too hard all at
once.
She glances at her notes, then back at them.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
I’ve spoken to Dr. Harker about
adding some equipment. Gentle
monitoring while you sleep, so we
can see what your brains are doing
when you see him.
Emma stiffens.
EMMA
Like a science fair?
MIRIAM
Like a sleep study. We do them
all the time. You’d be in the same
room, same beds, just with a few
wires.
LUIS
We’re not lab rats.
MIRIAM
No. You’re patients. And if this
works, you could help us design
better treatments for a lot of
other kids like you.
Emma and Mark exchange a look. Tara shrugs.
TARA
I already walk around in my sleep.
Might as well give the cameras a
show.
EMMA
What if it makes him stronger?
Miriam frowns slightly.
MIRIAM
He’s not real, Emma. He’s a story
you’re telling *together*. Wires
and machines can’t make a story
stronger.
We PUSH IN on Emma’s face. She’s not sure she believes that.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - SLEEP LAB ROOM - NIGHT
Converted ward room. Four simple BEDS, each with a thin pillow and blanket.
EEG MACHINES line one wall. Electrodes, wires, and adhesive pads are laid out
on a metal tray.
NEIL checks connections on a monitor. MIRIAM stands nearby, trying to look
reassuring rather than nervous.
The kids shuffle in: EMMA, MARK, TARA, LUIS. They’re in hospital sleepwear
(fresh gowns, socks).
TARA
Wow. Love what you’ve done with
the place. Very "mad scientist."
NEIL
(awkward chuckle)
It’s all standard. I promise.
Nothing shocks. Nothing hurts.
Just listens.
MARK
Story of my life.
He drops onto a bed, flops back.
Emma hovers near the doorway.
EMMA
And you’ll be watching the whole
time?
MIRIAM
Every minute. Me and Neil.
Neil nods.
NEIL
If anyone gets uncomfortable,
we can stop. We’re tracking heart
rate, REM, that sort of thing.
Luis eyes the wires like snakes.
LUIS
And if something... else shows up?
Neil hesitates. This is not in his training.
NEIL
The machines only record your
brain and your body. Whatever
else is up to you and Dr. Chase.
TARA
Great. Love that for us.
Miriam moves to Emma’s bed, starts attaching electrodes gently.
MIRIAM
You might not remember anything.
Or you might remember more.
Either way, we’ll have data.
EMMA
"We’ll have data." Super comforting.
MIRIAM
Think of it as... shining a light
on the dark corners.
Emma offers a skeptical look.
EMMA
Every horror movie I’ve seen says
don’t do that.
Miriam smiles tightly.
MIRIAM
Lucky for us, this isn’t a movie.
We hold on that for a beat.
CUT TO:
INT. OBSERVATION BOOTH - LATER (NIGHT)
Dim. NEIL sits at the console, headphones on, watching the kids through a large
window into the sleep lab.
The four teens lie in their beds, wires attached, eyes closed. Their chests
rise and fall.
MIRIAM stands behind Neil, arms folded.
On the monitors: four EEG lines, heart rate numbers, steady for now.
NEIL
Emma’s usually high baseline is
already dropping. That’s good.
MIRIAM
Tara?
NEIL
Elevated, but within range. She’s
a restless sleeper anyway.
He adjusts dials.
NEIL (CONT’D)
Once they hit REM, we should see
more pronounced spikes if they
run into your friend.
Miriam watches Emma, then looks away, suddenly unsure.
CUT TO:
INT. SLEEP LAB ROOM - NIGHT (DREAM MONTAGE)
A quick, stylized series of images:
— Emma’s eyelids flutter.
— Luis’s fingers twitch around his rosary.
— The EEG lines dance more erratically.
DREAM SHOTS:
— A DOOR at the end of a corridor, lit from within.
— A WHITEBOARD floating in darkness.
— A GLOVE scraping across metal, sparks in slow motion.
— TARA at the top of a stairwell, looking down into black.
— MARK in a sketchy, high-contrast version of the boiler room, lines forming
around him as he moves.
— A CLOSE-UP of burned skin, out of focus, too close to see clearly.
A low LAUGH echoes somewhere between all their dreams.
CUT BACK TO:
INT. OBSERVATION BOOTH - NIGHT
Neil squints at the EEG.
NEIL
We’ve got synchronized REM.
That’s... interesting.
On the monitor: all four REM indicators light at once.
Miriam leans closer to the glass.
MIRIAM
You’re in there. Come on. Use it.
Change it.
Through the glass, the kids twitch and murmur, caught in their shared labyrinth.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - HALLWAY - DAY (NEXT MORNING)
Fluorescent lights. A MENTAL HEALTH TECH wheels a cart of supplies down the hall.
Tara shuffles alongside NURSE CATHY, both holding clipboards.
NURSE CATHY
We’re adding extra measures for
you, okay? Motion sensor on your
door, one in the stairwell.
TARA
Because I’m a "liability."
NURSE CATHY
Because we like you breathing.
They reach a STAIRWELL DOOR. A maintenance guy finishes installing a small
CAMERA above it.
MAINTENANCE GUY
There. If she so much as sneezes
near these stairs, we’ll know.
TARA
Great. My fans get live coverage.
NURSE CATHY
It’s not about watching you. It’s
about catching you before you go
wandering.
TARA
You know what would stop me from
wandering? A lock.
NURSE CATHY
Fire codes.
Tara rolls her eyes.
TARA
So I can leave. I just can’t
leave safely.
Miriam approaches from down the hall, holding a file.
MIRIAM
Tara. I wanted to check in after
last night.
TARA
Dreams were weird. Shocker.
MIRIAM
Any walking?
TARA
Not that I remember.
NURSE CATHY
No alarm on your door. You stayed
put as far as we know.
Tara spreads her arms.
TARA
See? Model patient.
MIRIAM
Keep telling yourself that.
Miriam softens.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Seriously. If you feel... pulled
anywhere. Stairs, boiler, wherever
— tell me. Or Cathy.
Tara salutes lazily with two fingers.
TARA
Yes, ma’am.
As they move off, the CAMERA above the stairwell door blinks its little red
light. Watching. Waiting.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - CORRIDOR OUTSIDE SLEEP LAB - DAY
The kids spill out of the sleep lab, free of wires now. They look wrung out.
Emma rubs the faint adhesive marks on her temples. Mark shoves his hands
into his hoodie pockets. Luis fingers his rosary. Tara stretches.
TARA
Zero stars. Would not recommend.
Beds are lumpy, dreams are worse.
MARK
Yeah, but you can’t beat the
ambience. Very "industrial chic."
Emma shoots him a look.
EMMA
You saw it too.
MARK
Boiler? Pipes? Our boy with the
knife fingers doing his ASMR thing?
He makes a scraping gesture.
LUIS
Don’t joke.
EMMA
Door wasn’t just in my head.
TARA
Can we not do the "compare notes
on nightmares" thing in the
hallway?
Miriam steps out from the lab, clipboard tucked under her arm.
MIRIAM
We’ll go over everything in group.
For now, get some food. Hydrate.
Try to do something boring.
TARA
Boring is my superpower.
They disperse down the hall.
Miriam watches them go, then turns back toward—
CUT TO:
INT. OBSERVATION BOOTH - LATER
Neil replays last night’s session tape. He’s alone this time, lights dimmed.
ON MONITOR: time-coded footage of the kids sleeping in the lab.
He clicks to a segment. We hear faint sleep-murmurs—
EMMA (ON SPEAKERS, MURMUR)
Door... end of the hall...
LUIS (O.S., MURMUR)
No invites... no invites...
A SCRAPING sound sneaks into the audio. Neil taps the volume up.
SCRAAAAAPE. It’s clearer than before.
NEIL
Come on, be pipe noise...
He rewinds, plays again. Same sound.
He scribbles on his clipboard:
“REM SYNC + ANOMALOUS AUDIO — INVESTIGATE SOURCE?”
He glances through the glass into the now-empty sleep lab. It’s quiet, ordinary.
A faint reflection in the glass makes it look like someone in a hat is standing
behind him for just a heartbeat.
He whirls. No one there.
Neil takes off the headphones, rubs his eyes, unsettled.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - COMMON ROOM - EVENING
TV flickering. A different daytime show rerun.
Emma sits in a corner chair, knees drawn up, staring at nothing. Mark doodles
on scrap paper at a nearby table.
Tara paces, energy coiled up.
TARA
They’re gonna cancel it.
MARK
The show? The group?
TARA
The "build-your-own-monster"
experience. Harker was in the
hallway earlier, looking all
murdery.
EMMA
That’s just his face.
Tara drops into a chair.
TARA
If they pull the plug now, what?
We’re just stuck with half a
nightmare?
Emma thinks about that. Doesn’t like it.
EMMA
Maybe that’s better than finishing
it.
MARK
We already gave him a name, a
job, a home address.
He taps his pencil, uneasy.
MARK (CONT’D)
Feels pretty finished to me.
They sit in uneasy silence.
On the TV, the host LAUGHS. For a moment, the laugh distorts into something
darker before snapping back.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - STAFF ROOM - NIGHT
Nurses and ORDERLIES gather around a small table. Coffee. Whispered voices.
NURSE CATHY reads from a printed INCIDENT REPORT, frowning.
NURSE CATHY
"Patient Tara Jones apparently
exited her sleeping quarters,
ascended the east stairwell, and
suffered a fatal fall."
ORDERLY #1
"Apparently." Love that word.
ORDERLY #2
Kid had a camera on her door and
in the stairwell. Nothing "apparent"
about it.
HEAD NURSE
Administration wants it kept
simple. No speculation.
The STAFF door opens. MIRIAM steps in, pale, eyes raw.
Conversations die instantly.
MIRIAM
I need access to the stairwell
footage.
Head Nurse shifts uncomfortably.
HEAD NURSE
Dr. Harker already pulled it.
For review.
MIRIAM
Without notifying me.
HEAD NURSE
It’s his call. Director’s
privilege.
Miriam’s jaw tightens.
MIRIAM
For the record, Tara was in a
high-risk sleepwalking cohort.
She should’ve had a sitter.
ORDERLY #2
Schedules come from upstairs,
doc. Not from us.
ORDERLY #1
Or from Tara.
Miriam looks around the room—at the tired, wary staff who’ve seen too many
"accidents."
MIRIAM
If anyone saw anything... that
doesn’t fit in that report—
HEAD NURSE cuts in gently but firmly.
HEAD NURSE
We’re all very sorry, Dr. Chase.
But you know how this place works.
Beat. Miriam nods, throat tight, and leaves.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - STAIRWELL - NIGHT (FLASH OF WHAT HAPPENED)
Dim overhead light. The concrete echoes with the distant sound of alarms.
TARA’S BODY lies crumpled on the landing, neck at a bad angle, limbs twisted.
A SECURITY CAMERA above blinks its red light.
On her forearm: FRESH CUTS in four parallel lines, too precise to be from the fall.
HARD CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS - CHAPEL - DAY
A small multi-faith chapel. Stained glass, candles, a worn crucifix.
LUIS kneels in a pew, hands white-knuckled around his rosary, whispering
in Spanish.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
Forgive us. Forgive me. We made
a place for something that should
not be.
The door creaks open.
Emma steps in, hovering near the back.
EMMA
Didn’t mean to interrupt.
Luis doesn’t turn.
LUIS
You can’t interrupt someone
God’s ignoring.
Emma moves down the aisle, sits in the pew behind him.
EMMA
Tara’s dead because this place
doesn’t lock stairwell doors.
LUIS
She’s dead because we made...
*it*.
He won’t say the name.
LUIS (CONT’D)
I told you. You don’t invite it
in. We gave it a name. A job.
A house under the hospital.
EMMA
We’re sick, Luis. That’s all.
Miriam played with our symptoms
and it backfired. That doesn’t
mean—
LUIS
Tara’s neck wasn’t... "symptom."
Emma flinches.
LUIS (CONT’D)
You didn’t see her down there.
He looks up at the crucifix.
LUIS (CONT’D)
My priest at home said the devil
doesn’t need permission. But it
helps.
EMMA
So what, you think you’re
exorcising a cartoon?
LUIS
I think we built an altar and
started praying to the wrong
thing.
A faint METAL SCRAPE echoes from behind the altar, like something shifting
in the pipes.
Luis stiffens, eyes darting.
LUIS (CONT’D)
Did you hear that?
Emma listens. Nothing now.
EMMA
Just the building settling.
We PUSH IN on the crucifix.
For a single frame, its shadow on the wall looks like a man in a fedora
with a clawed hand.
CUT TO:
INT. HARKER’S OFFICE - LATE AFTERNOON
A large, tidy office. Diplomas on the wall. Blinds half-closed, slats of
light across the desk.
HARKER sits behind his desk, Tara’s file open.
MIRIAM stands across from him, jaw tight, hands clenched at her sides.
MIRIAM
You pulled the stairwell footage.
HARKER
Standard procedure.
MIRIAM
Without looping me in. I’m her
doctor.
HARKER
Not standard procedure. But given
the circumstances...
He taps the file.
HARKER (CONT’D)
The board is... concerned.
MIRIAM
So am I. Tara was in my program.
HARKER
Which is part of why they’re
concerned.
He closes the folder with deliberate care.
HARKER (CONT’D)
You proposed an experimental form
of exposure therapy. Teen patients
collaboratively constructing an
omnipotent tormentor.
He lets the phrase hang in the air.
HARKER (CONT’D)
How do you think that sounds to
people who only read the summary?
Miriam sits, uninvited, to steady herself.
MIRIAM
Tara’s death was a fall. This
hospital has a history of—
HARKER
That’s what the report will say.
MIRIAM
"Will say."
HARKER
The official conclusion. Unless
you’d prefer we speculate about
"monsters under the hospital" in
front of the board.
Miriam’s voice shakes just a little.
MIRIAM
We pushed them. Too fast. Too far.
That’s on me.
HARKER
What’s on you is a creative and
promising treatment that had an
unfortunate outcome in a facility
where unfortunate outcomes
happen... with or without your
program.
Beat.
HARKER (CONT’D)
The Foundation Project is on hold.
MIRIAM
They’re destabilized. Cutting
them off now—
HARKER
—is safer than continuing and
giving the board, and our friends
in certain agencies, more reasons
to shutter us.
She catches that word again.
MIRIAM
"Agencies"?
He smiles blandly.
HARKER
You asked for grants, Dr. Chase.
Grants come with eyes. Ears. People
who think in... applications.
She stares at him.
HARKER (CONT’D)
Off the record...
He leans in slightly.
HARKER (CONT’D)
You’ve stumbled into something
extraordinary. If we can structure
and even induce specific fears,
that’s beyond therapy. That’s
understanding fear itself.
MIRIAM
They are children. Not prototypes.
HARKER
They are both.
Silence. The air feels heavier.
HARKER (CONT’D)
Officially, you shut it down.
Unofficially...
He slides a thin folder across the desk toward her.
HARKER (CONT’D)
I’d hate for one tragic incident
to scare you away from your
life’s work.
Miriam looks at the folder like it might bite her.
MIRIAM
If I keep going, more of them
could die.
HARKER
Or you could save countless
others, once you understand what
you’ve tapped into.
He sits back.
HARKER (CONT’D)
We don’t get to choose the shape
of our breakthroughs. Only what
we do with them.
Miriam pushes the folder back to his side of the desk.
MIRIAM
My "breakthrough" is dead on a
slab downstairs.
She stands.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
I’m shutting it down.
Harker’s eyes darken just a fraction.
HARKER
Of course.
She turns to go.
HARKER (CONT’D)
Just remember... even if you stop
seeing them, they won’t stop
dreaming.
She pauses at the door, then walks out.
Harker calmly returns the folder to a desk drawer and closes it with a soft click.
CUT TO:
INT. THERAPY ROOM - DAY (AFTER TARA’S DEATH)
The circle of chairs again. One is empty.
EMMA, MARK, and LUIS sit in the remaining chairs. They look hollowed out.
The whiteboard is wiped clean.
MIRIAM sits with them, not behind a desk, not standing. Just part of the circle.
MIRIAM
There’s no agenda today. No
exercises. I just want us to
acknowledge what happened.
Her eyes flick briefly to the empty chair.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Tara’s gone. And I am... so sorry.
Silence.
Luis stares at the floor.
LUIS
We killed her.
Emma bristles.
EMMA
No. Stairs killed her. Gravity
killed her. Administration killed
her by not locking—
LUIS
We gave it a way in.
MARK
Don’t.
Luis looks up, eyes burning.
LUIS
You drew him.
MARK
Don’t put that on me.
LUIS
You gave him the glove. You gave
him a face.
MARK
We all did. You’re the one who
kept calling it a demon.
Emma jumps in.
EMMA
Stop. This is exactly what it
wants. If it was real, which it’s
not—
LUIS
You saw him.
EMMA
I saw a dream. A bad one. A shared
one. Because Dr. Chase messed with
our heads on purpose.
Miriam flinches at that, but doesn’t argue.
MARK
I’ve read about this stuff. Group
suggestion, shared imagery. It’s a
thing. We’re in a real weird
psych experiment, that’s all.
LUIS
Tara’s neck wasn’t a "weird psych
experiment."
He stands abruptly.
LUIS (CONT’D)
I’m not coming back to this group.
MIRIAM
Luis—
LUIS
You build monsters and then ask
us to feed them? No.
He heads for the door.
EMMA
Luis, we need you—
He stops, but doesn’t turn.
LUIS
You need God. Before it’s too late.
He exits.
Doors shuts. The remaining three sit in the uneasy silence.
EMMA
He’s wrong. Right?
Mark stares at his hands.
MARK
I used to draw for fun.
He eyes his sketchbook where it lies by his chair, like it might bite.
MARK (CONT’D)
Now every time I pick up a pencil,
he’s the first thing that shows up.
Miriam looks like she might cry, but doesn’t.
MIRIAM
We’re stopping. The project, the
assignments... all of it.
Emma looks up, surprised.
EMMA
We are?
MIRIAM
We pushed too hard. And the
hospital— and I— we failed Tara.
She takes a breath.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
No more sessions about him. No
more rules. No more drawing him
in this room.
Mark nods, almost relieved. Emma’s relief is tinged with fear.
EMMA
And if he doesn’t stop?
Miriam hesitates for just a fraction of a second.
MIRIAM
Then we find other ways to help
you. Individually.
She forces a small smile.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
For now, no more Freddy.
Unseen by them, on the whiteboard behind Miriam, a faint piece of chalk
scratches on its own, forming five shaky letters:
F R E D D Y
CUT TO:
FADE IN:
INT. WESTIN HILLS – CORRIDOR OUTSIDE CHAPEL – NIGHT
Dim, quiet. A CROSS-SHADOW thrown on the wall from the half-open chapel door.
LUIS exits the chapel, rosary clenched tight, eyes red and distant. He walks
down the corridor like someone trying not to run.
As he turns the corner—
Behind him, the chapel door creaks open a fraction more.
A faint METALLIC SCRAPE echoes out into the hall.
Luis freezes… then forces himself not to look back.
CUT TO:
INT. LUIS’S ROOM – NIGHT
Tiny room, crucifix above the bed, rosary hanging on the wall.
Luis sits on the edge of the bed, muttering prayers under his breath, sweating.
He lies back. Forces his eyes shut.
A long silence… then the HUM of the lights deepens into something lower,
hotter—
MATCH CUT TO:
INT. CHURCH – DREAM
Luis sits in the same pew as before. Except—
The chapel is bigger. Darker. Columns twist. The stained glass flickers like
film.
The crucifix above the altar seems… *off.* Christ’s body is burned, melted,
distorted.
Luis stands.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
You can’t be here.
His voice echoes too long, too loud.
The candles flicker to GREEN-TINTED LIGHT, casting warped shadows like claws.
He backs away.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
In the name of the Father, and of
the Son—
A DEEP VOICE interrupts from a confessional booth across the room.
FREDDY (O.S.)
Cute. Real cute.
But sweetheart… wrong guy.
Luis stiffens.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
You are not welcome here.
FREDDY (O.S.)
Oh, I dunno.
Looks like home to me.
The CONFESSIONAL DOOR creaks open.
Inside — DARKNESS.
Then a GLOVE emerges, tapping the wood.
FREDDY (O.S.)
(mock reverent)
Bless me, Padre, for I’m about to
sin. Again.
Luis backs toward the altar.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
You have no power here—
FREDDY (O.S.)
You kids keep sayin’ that like
it’s gonna be true.
He steps out of the confessional.
Freddy’s face is only HALF-FORMED, blurred like a smear on film.
His sweater’s stripes ripple like moving flames.
The hat is tilted low.
Luis raises the rosary like a shield.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
Begone, demon.
FREDDY
Demon?
Hey, I’m still in beta. But the
*reviews* are fantastic.
He SWIPES the glove—
The ROSARY BEADS snap apart midair, beads turning into tiny METAL BLADES as
they fall.
Luis GASPS.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
Let’s do a confession, kid.
Tell me what you’re really afraid of.
Luis stumbles back.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
(mock gentle)
‘Cause I already know…
Freddy’s SHADOW stretches impossibly long, swallowing the aisle—
Luis SCREAMS—
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. LUIS’S ROOM – NIGHT
Luis bolts upright, drenched in sweat, grabbing his rosary—
It’s whole. Completely intact.
He looks down at his HAND.
Four faint red indentations on his palm, in the shape of razor tips.
CUT TO:
INT. MARK'S ROOM – NIGHT
Mark sits cross-legged on his bed, sketchbook open. Dozens of half-erased
Freddy sketches surround him—like he tried to draw something else and Freddy
kept appearing anyway.
He rips out another page, throws it.
MARK
Draw something normal.
Anything.
He presses the pencil down. Sketches a factory. Then pipes. Then—
A HAT.
A GLOVE catching the light.
MARK (CONT’D)
No. No no no—
He closes his eyes, fighting it.
When he opens them—
The SKETCHBOOK PAGE is BLANK.
MARK (CONT’D)
…okay. Better. Good.
He breathes—
MATCH CUT TO:
INT. SKETCHWORLD – DREAM
What was blank is now a PANEL on a wall-sized COMIC PAGE.
Mark stands inside a living COMIC BOOK WORLD — everything black-and-white,
inked outlines, halftone dots. He’s drawn in the same style.
MARK
Oh come on—
A PANEL to his left shows the boiler room. A PANEL to his right shows him
falling. Another shows Tara’s corpse.
MARK (CONT’D)
NO. This isn’t mine. I'm not—
I didn’t draw this!
He grabs a GIANT PENCIL prop hanging like a tool on the wall.
MARK (CONT’D)
Fine. I can rewrite the dream.
He starts ERASING the fall panel. The edges SHAKE, smearing.
A SHADOW passes over him.
Freddy steps out from a crosshatch corner, literally BREAKING the border of
the panel with his glove.
FREDDY
Look at you, kid.
Creator… destroyer…
*artist.*
Mark swings the giant pencil like a spear.
Freddy LAUGHS, catching it between his claws.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
You can erase the page…
But I’m already *canon.*
He SLASHES the panel behind Mark—
Panels BLEED ink like wounds.
Mark runs across a series of pages—each showing parts of his life twisted
into horror.
MARK
Stop using my drawings!
FREDDY (O.S.)
Buddy… you birthed me.
A SKETCHY FREDDY-SHADOW pounces—
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. MARK'S ROOM – NIGHT
Mark wakes with a CHOKE, face smeared with charcoal dust.
He looks down at his sketchbook—
The page is scratched, smudged. The faint impression of a glove is pressed so
hard into it the paper is nearly torn.
CUT TO:
INT. OBSERVATION BOOTH – NIGHT
MIRIAM sits alone, watching the empty sleep lab. She presses PLAY on a tape.
ON TAPE: her own voice from a past session.
MIRIAM (TAPE)
Let’s start with rules—
A FAINT SECOND VOICE overlays it. Raspy. Wrong.
FREDDY (TAPE)
You can’t escape the fine print…
Miriam freezes.
She rewinds. Plays again.
The voice GROWS, as though getting clearer each playback.
FREDDY (TAPE)
You teach ‘em the rules…
I teach ‘em the loopholes.
Miriam SLAMS stop.
She stares at the one-way mirror.
For a moment—
Her REFLECTION is replaced with another version of herself inside the therapy
room, surrounded by whiteboard walls covered in Freddy doodles.
She gasps—
MATCH CUT TO:
INT. THERAPY ROOM – DREAM
Miriam stands alone. The circle of chairs is there, but the walls are GONE.
Instead—
Stacks of TAPES.
Whiteboards floating like pages.
A huge chalk outline of FREDDY'S HAND across the wall.
A LOOP of her own voice repeats:
MIRIAM (V.O.)
What are the rules?
FREDDY (V.O.)
What are the exceptions?
She whirls—
Freddy stands behind the one-way mirror glass—which is floating midair.
FREDDY
Hey, doc.
Ever feel like your patients aren’t
the only ones bein’ studied?
He presses his glove to the "glass."
It SINKS through like jelly.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
You made me real clinical-like.
But I’m thinkin’ outside the box.
The mirror SHATTERS— shards floating weightlessly—
Miriam SCREAMS—
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. OBSERVATION BOOTH – NIGHT
Miriam jerks awake at the console. She’s alone. Heart racing.
A faint scrape echoes from the vent.
She grabs her coat and leaves.
CUT TO:
INT. STAFF CORRIDOR – NIGHT
Miriam strides down the hall, shaken. She runs straight into NEIL.
He’s holding files. Startled.
NEIL
Whoa—Dr. Chase? You okay?
MIRIAM
No. Not even close.
Neil searches her face.
NEIL
I’ve been meaning to talk to you.
MIRIAM
About the tapes?
Neil blinks.
NEIL
…you’ve heard it too?
She nods.
MIRIAM
There’s something happening we don’t
understand. I don’t care if it’s
psychological, neurological, or—
She lowers her voice.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
—or something else.
Neil exhales. Relieved she finally said it aloud.
NEIL
They’re synchronized. Their REM,
their imagery, their stress spikes.
Every time one dreams about… *him*,
they all do.
MIRIAM
He’s evolving. Growing. Feeding.
NEIL
That’s not how dreams work.
MIRIAM
No.
But it *is* how stories work.
Beat.
Neil looks over his shoulder to see if anyone’s listening.
NEIL
Harker wants to keep the project
going, doesn’t he?
MIRIAM
Yes. Quietly.
NEIL
Then we’re on our own.
She nods.
MIRIAM
We need one more session.
NEIL
One more?
MIRIAM
Not to build him.
To unmake him.
She looks haunted but resolute.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Before he writes the ending for us.
CUT TO:
FADE IN:
INT. WESTIN HILLS – THERAPY ROOM – NIGHT (THE “WRITERS’ ROOM” DREAM BEGINS)
A fluorescent BUZZ. A SNAP.
EMMA blinks awake in her chair.
Except—
This isn’t the real therapy room.
The walls have dissolved into FLOATING WHITEBOARDS, chalk-scrawled notes
drifting like debris. Pages of SCRIPT PAPER flutter in a slow-motion blizzard.
MARK sits up in his chair beside her, confused, rendered in slightly sketchy
outlines. LUIS materializes in the chair on Emma’s other side, clutching a
rosary that drips ink like melted wax.
EMMA
We’re dreaming.
MARK
Group dream. Again.
LUIS
No. We were pulled.
The chairs SCRAPE across the floor on their own, forming a tighter circle.
Above them—
Ceiling tiles flip like cards, each revealing a new RULE written in giant text:
**ONLY ACTIVE WHEN ASLEEP**
**FEEDS ON FEAR**
**STRONGER WITH MULTIPLE DREAMERS**
A beat of silence as all three watch the words shift from one rule to another—
Then a NEW rule writes itself:
**ONLY ONE WILL WAKE.**
MARK
Nope. Nuh-uh. Screw that.
A SPOTLIGHT clicks on behind them.
Freddy steps into view like a showman entering a stage—fedora low, glove
gleaming, body still slightly fuzzy, but unmistakably present.
FREDDY
Welcome to the writers’ room,
kiddos.
He spreads his arms.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
Let’s punch up the script.
The whiteboards shuffle like playing cards behind him, rearranging themselves
into a massive storyboard wall showing—
—TARA’s fall.
—Luis praying.
—Mark drawing.
—Emma running down the corridor.
EMMA
(whispers)
He’s feeding on our memories.
FREDDY
Feeding? Sweetheart—
I’m *editing*.
He flicks a claw across one storyboard. TARA’s body disappears from the image.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
See? No tragedy. No trauma.
I can give you a happy ending.
The image reappears—TARA alive, smiling—
Then the image CORRUPTS, her smile stretching into a scream.
MARK
Stop screwing with her!
FREDDY
Oh, but she loves a rewrite.
He taps another board:
**WEAKNESS: LACK OF BELIEF**
The text melts into:
**WEAKNESS: THERE IS NONE**
LUIS
He’s changing the rules.
FREDDY
Finally! Someone’s catching up.
Took you long enough, Padre.
He leans into Luis’s face, too close.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
Faith is just…
fanfiction with better marketing.
Luis recoils.
Emma stands, fists clenched.
EMMA
You’re not the writer here, Freddy.
FREDDY
Honey—
You brought me to the table.
The floor beneath them splits open like a stage prop.
Below: an ever-expanding BOILER ROOM, pipes stretching into infinity.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
And now it’s my play.
He snaps his fingers—
ALL THE CHAIRS DROP INTO THE VOID—
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. EMMA’S ROOM – NIGHT
Emma bolts upright. GASPING. Sweating.
She grips her head.
EMMA
You’re not real…
You’re not real…
But a faint chalky whisper comes from her nightstand.
She turns—
On her notebook, in a shaky hand that isn’t hers:
**FINISH THE STORY**
Her breath catches.
CUT TO:
INT. MARK’S ROOM – NIGHT
Mark wakes violently, as if thrown into his body.
His sketchbook lies open on his stomach.
A NEW drawing covers the page:
A storyboard-style scene of the therapy room—
With *MIRIAM burning tapes* while the kids watch.
MARK
What…
I didn’t draw that.
I didn’t—
He slams the book shut.
CUT TO:
INT. LUIS’S ROOM – NIGHT
Luis wakes, rosary in hand.
Four beads are cracked.
In the corner of the room—
A SHADOW ripples on the wall, shaped like Freddy’s silhouette.
Luis squeezes his rosary until his knuckles turn white.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
God help us.
CUT TO:
INT. MIRIAM’S OFFICE – DAWN
Miriam sits at her desk, hollow-eyed, surrounded by files.
TAPE RECORDERS. DRAWINGS. WHITEBOARD PHOTOS.
All laid out like evidence in a murder investigation.
Neil enters quietly.
NEIL
You didn’t sleep.
MIRIAM
I did. I just didn’t survive it.
Neil sits across from her.
NEIL
I had a thought. It might be stupid.
MIRIAM
At this point, stupid might save us.
NEIL
What if we treat him like a story?
Like… a narrative infection.
MIRIAM
A tulpa. A thoughtform. Something
given shape by shared belief.
NEIL
It matches the data.
The convergence. The escalating detail.
The strength when more of them dream.
Miriam nods slowly.
MIRIAM
Then stories have rules.
And rules can be rewritten.
NEIL
If you’re right…
destroying the story might destroy him.
Miriam stands, goes to a filing cabinet, unlocks it.
Inside: MORE TAPES. OLD FOUNDATION NOTES. EARLY SKETCHES.
NEIL (CONT’D)
All the anchors.
MIRIAM
Everything that defines him.
She gathers them into a stack.
NEIL
What’s the plan?
MIRIAM
One last session.
NEIL
Are you sure they’ll agree?
MIRIAM
They don’t have a choice.
She shuts the drawer.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
Neither do we.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS – THERAPY ROOM – DAY (NEXT MORNING)
Emma, Mark, and Luis sit in the chairs again.
The fourth chair—TARA’s—remains empty.
Miriam stands, holding the stack of tapes and notes.
MIRIAM
We’re doing one more dream. Together.
Then we destroy every trace of him.
Emma stiffens.
EMMA
Destroy… him?
MIRIAM
The story. The rules. The material.
The memory, if we can.
Luis shakes his head.
LUIS
You can’t fight something like this
by going back in.
MARK
We can’t fight him out here either.
Emma looks between them.
EMMA
He’s getting stronger. He’s rewriting
things. If we don’t take control—
FREDDY (WHISPER, O.S.)
Too late for that, sweetheart…
They all stiffen.
The whisper fades as if it came from the walls.
MIRIAM
We go in together. Lucid. Aware.
And we rewrite the ending.
Silence.
Then Mark quietly:
MARK
Okay.
I’m in.
Luis trembles… then nods once.
LUIS
If this is the only way…
Emma meets Miriam’s eyes.
EMMA
Let’s finish the story.
Miriam finally breathes.
MIRIAM
Good.
Tonight. Sleep lab. All of us.
She places the tapes and files into a metal lockbox.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
When we wake…
this all gets burned.
CLOSE ON the lockbox.
A faint scratching comes from inside.
Almost like CLAWS on metal.
CUT TO BLACK.
FADE IN:
INT. WESTIN HILLS – SLEEP LAB – NIGHT (FINAL SESSION SETUP)
Dim lights. Quiet hum of machines. Four beds arranged in a circle.
Electrodes coiled neatly.
Monitors blinking softly in standby.
NEIL double-checks each EEG lead, but he’s shaken—hands trembling slightly.
MIRIAM enters with the LOCKBOX in her arms.
She places it on a metal table in the center of the room.
MIRIAM
No more delays.
Emma, Mark, and Luis stand at the doorway, looking smaller than they’ve looked
all film—tired, scared, determined.
EMMA
We’re sure this will work?
MIRIAM
We’re not sure of anything.
But stories end when the storytellers stop telling them.
MARK
And if he’s the one telling now?
MIRIAM
Then we take the pen back.
Luis crosses himself, gripping his rosary.
LUIS
Dios nos ayude.
Neil stands by the monitors.
NEIL
If anything looks dangerous—
heart rhythm, breath rate—
I’m pulling you out.
MIRIAM
Don’t.
Neil stares.
NEIL
Miriam—
MIRIAM
If you pull us early, we’ll be stuck
halfway.
And he’ll follow us out.
A cold beat.
NEIL
Then… God help all of you.
They lie down on the beds.
Miriam dims the lights.
MIRIAM
Deep breaths.
Lucid intent: change the story.
Emma closes her eyes last — and whispers:
EMMA
Don’t let him write the ending.
The room goes still.
The EEGs spike—
MATCH CUT TO:
INT. DREAM REALM – WHITE VOID
Emma opens her eyes.
She’s standing in an infinite WHITE SPACE. No walls, no floor—just blank canvas.
One by one, MARK and LUIS materialize beside her, along with MIRIAM.
Their feet make ripples of chalk-dust as they move.
MARK
Did we… do it?
MIRIAM
This is the root.
The foundation before the Foundation.
Emma looks around.
EMMA
It’s not stable.
Ink blots form at their feet.
Whiteboards and rule text float by like drifting debris.
Luis sees a rule sheet drift past:
**MONSTER WEAKNESS: WAKING UP**
It turns black, then bursts into flakes.
LUIS
He’s deleting our rules.
Suddenly—
A deep RUMBLE.
The VOID CRACKS like glass.
Out of the fissures pour BLACK STRIPES — red and green — twisting through the void like tendrils.
MARK
Oh shit—
The stripes weave together—
And FREDDY KRUEGER pulls himself into the space, fully formed for the first time.
He grins, flesh charred and cracked, eyes burning like coals.
FREDDY
Miss me?
He taps the void with his glove, and the white space SHATTERS—
TRANSITION TO:
INT. DREAM ARENA – HYBRID REALITY
The VOID explodes into a shifting labyrinth:
—Half the therapy room
—Half boiler room
—Floating whiteboards
—Torn comic panels
—Fragments of church stained glass
—Catwalks that lead nowhere
—Stacks of tapes like crumbling skyscrapers
Everything they’ve dreamed, built, or believed mashed together.
FREDDY
Look at this place!
Your greatest hits album.
Emma steps forward, trembling but steady.
EMMA
This ends tonight.
FREDDY
Oh sweetheart…
He gestures with his glove—
Four chalk words write themselves midair:
**STORIES NEVER END.**
FREDDY (CONT’D)
They just get sequels.
He flicks his fingers.
A WHITEBOARD sprouts rules:
**ONLY ONE WILL WAKE.**
MARK
Don’t look at it! Don’t let it in!
But the rule GLOWS, burying into the arena’s architecture.
FREDDY
Oops. Looks like we’re raising the stakes.
Luis lifts his rosary, voice trembling but fierce.
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
You have no dominion here.
FREDDY
Oh, Padre…
I have a whole DOMINION here.
He SLASHES at the air.
The ground beneath LUIS becomes a CRACKLING GRATE. Flames lick upward.
Mark steps in, sketchbook in hand.
MARK
Not this time.
He flips to a blank page—
It fills with a crude drawing of a WALL.
And in the dream—
A REAL WALL materializes between Luis and the fire.
Freddy pauses.
FREDDY
Aww. The kid’s finally learning his craft.
Mark glares.
MARK
I know the rule here.
Thoughts shape the space.
FREDDY
Sure do.
Freddy flicks his glove—
Mark’s sketchbook SLAMS SHUT.
The wall Mark created EXPLODES into ash.
MARK
Shit—
Emma looks at Miriam.
EMMA
You said stories have rules.
MIRIAM
They also have authors.
She lifts the LOCKBOX from nowhere—summoned by her will.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
These are your anchors.
Your origin documents.
Freddy’s smile falters.
FREDDY
Hey hey hey—those are collector’s items.
MIRIAM
And once they’re gone—
She opens the box—
Inside: TAPES. PAGES. SKETCHES. WHITEBOARD PHOTOS.
All glowing with a faint red energy—the SENSE OF MEMORY.
MIRIAM (CONT’D)
—so are you.
Freddy SCREAMS, voice ripping like tearing metal.
FREDDY
NO!
YOU DON’T GET TO DELETE ME!
**YOU BUILT ME!**
The entire arena shakes.
Freddy’s claws dig into the void-wall, trying to anchor himself.
FREDDY (CONT’D)
Without the story—
YOU’RE NOTHING!
EMMA
Then let’s find out.
Luis and Mark brace Miriam as she steps forward.
MIRIAM
I started this.
I end this.
She throws the FIRST TAPE into the shifting furnace behind Freddy.
It BURSTS into light—
Part of Freddy’s striped sleeve DISINTEGRATES.
FREDDY
AAAAAARGH—
Mark grabs a drawing from the box, tears it—
Freddy’s FACE glitches, half-erased, skin flickering like corrupted film.
EMMA
Keep going!
Luis grabs a whiteboard photo—
LUIS
(SUBTITLED)
In the name of God—
He SHREDS it—
Freddy’s SHADOW evaporates from the floor.
FREDDY
STOP!
You don’t understand—
Emma steps in, picks up the LAST PAGE of rules.
EMMA
You’re right.
We don’t.
And she TEARS IT DOWN THE MIDDLE.
Freddy SHRIEKS—
His body collapses into red-and-green ribbons.
Stripes.
Scraps.
Nothing.
The arena begins to dissolve.
MIRIAM
It’s working—
We’re ending it—
But as the world collapses, Freddy’s voice returns—
Disembodied. Echoing.
FREDDY (V.O.)
Cute trick…
But you can’t kill a story…
Miriam freezes.
FREDDY (V.O.) (CONT’D)
…when YOU’RE PART OF IT.
The collapsing dream ARENA SURGES—
A STRIPE-WHIP lashes out from the void and WRAPS AROUND MIRIAM’S REP. She gasps—
MIRIAM
NO—!
Emma reaches for her.
EMMA
MIRIAM!
MIRIAM
WRITE THE ENDING—
BEFORE HE REWRITES YOU—!
She is yanked backward into the DISSOLVING VOID—
And GONE.
SMASH CUT TO:
INT. SLEEP LAB – NIGHT (WAKING)
Emma JOLTS AWAKE, SCREAMING.
Mark sits up, gasping. Luis clutches his chest.
Monitors BEEP wildly.
Neil rushes to Emma’s bedside.
NEIL
Easy—easy—Emma, breathe—!
Emma sobs, shaking.
She looks over—
MIRIAM’S BED IS EMPTY.
The sheet looks… untouched.
As if no one lay there at all.
EMMA
No…
No no no—
MARK
She was with us—
She was RIGHT THERE—
LUIS
Did she wake up early?
Neil checks the monitors.
NEIL
There’s no reading…
No EEG trace…
No REM markers…
He looks at them, horrified.
NEIL (CONT’D)
According to the machine…
She was never here.
Emma breaks, bursting into tears.
EMMA
She saved us.
Luis trembles.
LUIS
Or she’s trapped…
in whatever’s left.
Mark closes his eyes, voice small:
MARK
Did we win?
Emma wipes her tears.
EMMA
We ended the story.
But we PUSH IN on the LOCKBOX on the table—
It’s EMPTY.
A faint SCRAPE echoes from inside it.
CUT TO:
EXT. WESTIN HILLS – SUNRISE
Emma, Mark, and Luis sit on the rooftop.
Exhausted. Hollow. But alive.
MARK
What do we tell people?
EMMA
Nothing.
That’s the point.
No story. No belief. No him.
Luis nods.
LUIS
Then we let him fade.
Emma grips the edge of the roof.
EMMA
And we don’t dream about him ever again.
They sit in the rising light.
CUT TO:
INT. WESTIN HILLS – ARCHIVE BASEMENT – YEARS LATER
Dim, dusty. Stacked with old medical files.
NEIL, older now, sorts boxes. He finds one:
**FOUNDATION PROJECT – CHASE, M.**
**DO NOT OPEN.**
He hesitates.
Then opens it.
Inside:
Empty folders.
Blank pages.
A single unmarked cassette tape.
Neil frowns.
He picks up the tape…
Puts it in a dusty player…
Clicks PLAY.
Nothing at first.
Then—
A faint SCRAPE.
Then Freddy’s LAUGH.
FREDDY (ON TAPE)
Did ya miss me?
Neil GASPS—
LIGHTS FLASH—
SMASH CUT TO BLACK.
END.
LOGLINE
Years before Freddy Krueger terrorizes Elm Street, a groundbreaking experiment at Westin Hills asks teenage patients to build a single fear-shaped “boogeyman” to contain their trauma—but the creature they imagine evolves beyond their control, turning the hospital into the birthplace of a nightmare that refuses to stay fictional.
A PREQUEL to the entire Westin Hills Stories anthology.
Why this story works as a prequel:
✔ It shows the origin of the “idea” of Freddy — long before the Springwood slasher is born.
✔ It explains why Westin Hills later becomes a focal point in the Elm Street mythology.
✔ It establishes how Freddy’s dream power is rooted not just in the supernatural, but in collective imagination and trauma experiments.
✔ It sets up themes and lore that future stories (set later in the Elm Street timeline) can build upon.
In universe:
This is Westin Hills Stories: FOUNDATION — Episode 0, the Genesis of Freddy as myth, dreamform, and shared fear.
Everything that comes after—whether other Westin Hills experiments, Kristen’s Dream Warriors years, or later cases—can trace their nightmare logic back to this failed experiment.
PITCH DECK TEXT
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
THE ORIGIN OF A NIGHTMARE.
TITLE PAGE
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
A Psychological Horror Prequel
Tagline:
“Before Elm Street… there was the Foundation.”
LOGLINE
When a group of teens in a psychiatric hospital are asked to invent a shared “dream monster” for experimental trauma therapy, their creation begins to grow a will of its own—evolving into the earliest prototype of Freddy Krueger—and the patients must destroy the story before it consumes their minds, their memories, and their lives.
POSITION IN THE FRANCHISE
FOUNDATION is a prequel set decades before the Elm Street murders and the Dream Warriors era.
This film explores:
-
The conceptual birth of Freddy Krueger
-
How Westin Hills became ground zero for dream-based experimentation
-
The origins of shared nightmares, dream rules, and Freddy’s supernatural logic
-
The dangerous potential of fear, narrative, and belief
It expands the Freddy mythology without contradicting canon—showing how a fictional boogeyman became fertile ground for the real Freddy to later inhabit.
TONE & STYLE
A cerebral, atmospheric horror film that blends:
-
Psychological tension of Black Swan
-
Reality-bending dream logic of Inception and The Cell
-
Meta-story horror of The Babadook and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
-
Institutional dread of Shutter Island and The Exorcist III
The violence is suggestive and surreal rather than graphic.
The horror grows from the creation of a myth, not the physical carnage.
This is Freddy as he has rarely been seen:
A concept. A shared hallucination. A story becoming sentient.
THE PREMISE
Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital, late 1960s.
A young psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Chase, pioneers a radical experiment in trauma therapy called The Foundation Project:
Give patients a shared nightmare figure.
Define its rules.
Control it.
Defeat it together.
Four troubled teens participate:
-
Emma – A lucid dreamer terrified of sleep
-
Mark – An artist whose sketches shape the nightmare
-
Luis – A religious patient who believes the entity is demonic
-
Tara – A sleepwalker who becomes the experiment’s first casualty
They design a fear-container:
A tall, burned man in a fedora with a handmade blade glove… in the boiler room beneath the hospital.
They name him—almost instinctively—Freddy.
And that gives him power.
WHY THIS STORY NOW?
Freddy Krueger is one of horror's most iconic villains, yet his mythology has never fully explored:
-
How fear creates monsters
-
How belief empowers them
-
How the dream world can birth something real
FOUNDATION taps into modern cultural anxieties about:
-
Experimental psychology
-
Institutions shaping vulnerable minds
-
The blurred line between fiction and reality
-
The creation of dangerous narratives through collective imagination
This film reframes Freddy not just as a supernatural killer—but as a story that escaped its creators.
THE STORY ARC
ACT I – THE CREATION
-
Dr. Chase enrolls four teens in The Foundation Project.
-
They design a nightmare figure to contain their fears.
-
Shared dreams begin immediately.
-
The figure grows clearer, more defined… and more independent.
-
Tara dies in a sleepwalking incident that carries Freddy’s signature.
ACT II – THE EVOLUTION
-
The group fractures under guilt and fear.
-
Dreams become shared arenas where Freddy rewrites his own rules.
-
Luis sees him as a demon; Mark sees him in his artwork; Emma hears his voice.
-
Miriam suspects the experiment has birthed a tulpa-like entity.
-
Harker pressures her to continue the project for “research value.”
ACT III – THE ERASURE
-
Miriam decides the only way to kill him is to destroy his story.
-
The teens enter a final collective dream to rewrite Freddy out of existence.
-
They burn tapes, shred rules, and erase sketches—undoing his anchors.
-
Miriam sacrifices herself inside the dream to sever Freddy’s origin.
-
The teens awaken with no memories of the Foundation Project.
-
But decades later… a forgotten tape replays in the archive.
-
Freddy’s laugh emerges from static.
CHARACTERS
DR. MIRIAM CHASE (30s) – The Visionary
Brilliant, empathetic, ambitious.
She wants to revolutionize therapy, not realizing she’s conducting the experiment that will haunt Westin Hills forever.
EMMA WARD (17) – The Lucid Dreamer
Smart, guarded, anxious.
Has the strongest connection to the dream world; becomes Freddy’s primary adversary.
MARK FLETCHER (18) – The Artist
Withdrawn, creative, sarcastic.
His drawings help define Freddy’s appearance—giving the monster a body.
LUIS ALVAREZ (19) – The Believer
Raised in strict religious tradition.
Fears Freddy is a demon invited by their collective sin.
TARA JONES (16) – The Sleepwalker
Energetic, defensive, reckless.
Her unexplained death becomes the experiment’s turning point.
DR. ELLIOT HARKER (50s) – The Administrator
Hospital director with secret ties to early dream-research agencies.
Sees fear as a tool.
WHAT SETS THIS APART
⭐ A new origin for Freddy that respects canon
Shows the mythic groundwork for his dream powers without rewriting his human backstory.
⭐ Elevates the franchise
More psychological, more emotional, more thematic.
⭐ Expands the Elm Street universe
This can launch an anthology: Westin Hills Stories—each film exploring a different dream experiment.
⭐ Creates Freddy without Freddy
This version is not the Springwood Slasher—
It’s the idea of Freddy forming decades earlier.
⭐ A finale that ties directly into the canon timeline
A forgotten tape resurfaces, bridging FOUNDATION to the modern Freddy mythology.
VISUAL LANGUAGE
DREAM SPACES
-
Escher-like corridors
-
Melting hospital walls
-
Floating whiteboards
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Sketch-world sequences
-
Boiler room merging with therapy room
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Scripts, chalk, and rules turning into weapons and cages
AESTHETIC
-
Clean institutional reality vs. chaotic dream surrealism
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Muted 60s palette contrasted with red/green Freddy color intrusions
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Mirror reflections, shadow doubling, flickering lights
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Tape glitches and film burn effects to show narrative corruption
TARGET AUDIENCE
-
Fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street
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Elevated horror audiences (A24, Blumhouse tone)
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Fans of psychological or meta-horror
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Teens and 18–35 demo seeking modern mythmaking
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Viewers of Stranger Things, The Haunting of Hill House, Black Swan, Smile, The Babadook
FRANCHISE POTENTIAL
WESTIN HILLS STORIES can expand into:
-
Anthology films about different dream experiments
-
Streaming series exploring Westin Hills through decades
-
Foundation tie-in materials: tapes, journals, sketches
-
Lead-in to the Dream Warriors era
-
A unified Freddy mythos thread connecting past, present, and Nightmare lore
FOUNDATION serves as the origin point for the dream-logic that defines Freddy’s power.
ENDING & HOOK
FOUNDATION ends on a chilling note:
-
The teens survive with memories erased.
-
The hospital buries the experiment.
-
Miriam is lost to the dream realm.
-
Freddy is erased from existence—
Until one forgotten tape replays itself decades later.
A faint scrape.
A familiar laugh.
The nightmare waits for its chance to be born again.
WHY THIS WILL SELL
-
It offers fresh lore without rebooting or contradicting canon.
-
It provides emotional depth rarely explored in Elm Street films.
-
It gives fans a new perspective on Freddy as a mythic figure.
-
It has a built-in franchise roadmap.
-
It resonates with modern themes: trauma, mental health, institutional control, and the power of stories.
FOUNDATION is both a prequel and a reinvention—
A film that deepens the legend instead of retelling it.
FINAL TAGLINE SLIDE
**“Every legend has a beginning.
Every nightmare has a foundation.”**
⭐ STUDIO SUBMISSION NOTES
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Westin Hills Stories – FOUNDATION
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Title: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: WESTIN HILLS STORIES – FOUNDATION
Genre: Psychological Horror / Elevated Supernatural
Format: Feature Film (120 pages)
Franchise Position: Prequel within the Elm Street universe; canon-compatible expansion
Tone: Prestige horror with meta and psychological elements (A24 meets classic Wes Craven)
FOUNDATION presents a bold, lore-expanding origin story that respects Elm Street mythology while offering a fresh, contemporary psychological approach. The script introduces the conceptual genesis of Freddy Krueger—not as a human murderer, but as an emergent nightmare idea born from an experimental therapy project gone wrong.
SUMMARY OF STORY & THEMES
Set decades before the Elm Street killings, the film follows Dr. Miriam Chase, a gifted psychiatrist leading an ambitious project at Westin Hills: teaching teens to create a shared nightmare figure to externalize and conquer their trauma.
Her four patients—Emma, Mark, Luis, and Tara—collectively invent a proto-Freddy form that begins evolving beyond their intentions. The entity gains definition through their drawings, fears, faith, and belief.
Themes include:
-
The dangerous power of stories
-
Institutions controlling vulnerable minds
-
Trauma as a living, contagious force
-
The intersection of psychology, mythology, and supernatural horror
-
How Freddy became more than a man: a myth born from shared fear
The climax sees Miriam and the teens attempt to erase Freddy by destroying his “origin documents,” only for the ending to reveal a surviving tape playing decades later—reigniting the nightmare.
WHAT MAKES THIS PROJECT VIABLE
1. Franchise Expansion Without Reboot Fatigue
FOUNDATION enriches the mythology instead of retreading it. It positions Freddy as an evolving nightmare that predates his physical incarnation—revitalizing the brand without invalidating existing canon.
2. Elevated Horror Appeal
The psychological depth, dream logic, and meta-narrative place this film in the same commercial lane as:
-
Hereditary
-
Black Swan
-
Smile
-
The Babadook
A prestige tone makes this a critical-as-well-as-commercial contender.
3. Built-In Fanbase + Modern Accessibility
The Elm Street IP remains culturally iconic. This film works as both:
-
A standalone horror event, and
-
A lore prelude bridging to future projects (Dream Warriors connections, Westin Hills anthology potential)
4. Franchise Roadmap Potential
FOUNDATION can launch a series of “Westin Hills Stories,” each exploring different dream-related experiments, incidents, or decades of the institution’s past.
CHARACTER STRENGTHS
Dr. Miriam Chase – The Visionary
Complex lead with emotional depth; her ambition creates the nightmare and her sacrifice anchors the tragedy.
Emma Ward – The Lucid Dreamer
A contemporary, emotionally resonant protagonist; embodies trauma, intuition, and final-girl intelligence.
Mark Fletcher – The Artist
A unique visual conduit: his drawings literally shape the monster's form. Strong visual storytelling angle.
Luis Alvarez – The Believer
Religious tension adds moral and supernatural dimension; provides emotional heart and cultural depth.
Tara Jones – The Sleepwalker
Her early death escalates stakes and defines the project's point of no return.
COMMERCIAL & CREATIVE POTENTIAL
Visual Effects Opportunities
-
Surreal dream sequences
-
Shifting whiteboard-rule worlds
-
Chalk-dust Freddy formations
-
Hybrid therapy room / boiler room dreamscapes
Unique imagery distinguishes this from standard slasher fare.
Marketing Strength
-
Character posters (already developed)
-
Iconic taglines (“Before Elm Street… there was the Foundation.”)
-
Viral potential around “the story that created Freddy”
-
High-impact poster concepts (lockbox, sketchbook creature, dream fracture imagery)
RISKS & CONSIDERATIONS
1. Tonal Shift from Slasher Roots
This film is less “slasher” and more “psychological horror” — something studios may embrace or resist depending on brand goals.
Mitigation: Clear messaging: This is the elevated origin story; later films can escalate into the slasher era.
2. Canon Sensitivity
Fans are protective of Freddy’s backstory.
Mitigation: Project doesn’t alter human Freddy; it expands his mythic framework.
3. Needs Strong Visual Direction
Dream logic must be handled creatively to avoid confusion.
Mitigation: Hire a stylized director comfortable with surreal horror (e.g., Benson & Moorhead, Mike Flanagan, Oz Perkins).
RECOMMENDATION
FOUNDATION is a high-concept, highly marketable prequel that revitalizes Elm Street by returning to what made the franchise legendary—fear reinvented through imagination and dreams—while delivering the prestige tone modern audiences value.
The script shows clear franchise potential, artistic depth, and strong thematic grounding. With the right director and cast, this can become both a commercial hit and a critical standout, offering a bold new direction for the Elm Street universe.
This project is recommended for:
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Development consideration
-
Packaging with a visionary horror director
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Franchise planning discussion
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