Can Freddy prevent you from waking up from the Nightmare?

Fred Krueger has many skills.
He has cheated Death itself to live on in the Nightmares of his potential victims.Continuing the horrific acts that gave him so much pleasure when alive.Now... with more freedom and more potential to make the pain personal.

He can cause physical harm to himself without any damage.Something he gleefully presented in the first movie as a frightening way to show his victims that "there is nothing you can do to hurt me.And if you can't hurt me, how are you going to stop me?HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

He has the skill to not only invade the most private dreams,that personal space that no one in your life has access too, but also to understand that which you fear the most and that which you love and turn it against you in your mind.

How does he have access to this useful information? Is that part of his dream s-kills? To read your thoughts and pick out the fears that he can focus on to maximize your screams?

Or does he watch you from the shadows? Learning what he needs by glimpsing into your private moments.Seeing what Nightmares your normal mind gives you and picking out the details to best cut you to the quick.

Strangely, in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Nightmares Freddy presented his victims were not based on any personal fear.Other than survival from a boogeyman while trapped in a strange boiler room.The occasional taunting of Nancy with the bloody body of her friend.

It's actually surprising on reflection that none of the Nightmares had any  personal connection to the intended victim. Perhaps at this stage of his powers Freddy did not have full control of certain dream s-kills. And he was just having too much fun chasing and killing his victims like he did when alive, this time without any chance of retribution.

It's assumed that Tina was his first kill in the Nightmare.The night of Tina's first on screen terror we are led to believe that Freddy also visited Nancy,Rod,and Glen based on their reactions and conversations the next day.

In the original script, Nancy talks about Freddy entering the room she was inside of in her dream,glaring at her,scraping his knives along the wall and then exiting out the other side of the room.As if he was just checking in on her and had somewhere else to be.

I wonder how long he had been watching them before he decided to play?He was burned to death over a decade ago but he's just now dream stalking his victims?I would think that taking  the lives of the children of the parents who burned him,so soon after they thought they stopped him, would be more enjoyable.Immediately showing them that they failed, once again, to protect their children. Rather than many years later when most of the parents had pushed the memories of Krueger to the back of their minds and moved on with their lives.

Freddy liked his victims young,I wonder if he watched little Nancy and Tina growing up in their dreams.Waiting for that day he could have them for himself.Perhaps he had to wait till the Elm Street children reached a certain age before he could cross over into their dreams.

And once in, why would he want to give up the fun of terrorizing them nightly? I'd wager that he couldn't be confident that this opportunity would last forever.So he had to get in, and gut them out before it was too late.

Freddy knew he had powers, and in these first Nightmares he was testing out their limits.

And one of the skills that I found myself contemplating if he possessed was the power to keep you trapped in the Nightmare.To prevent you from waking up and getting away.

What made me think about it was the moment when we see Nancy's first Nightmare at the school. She is cornered and she knows it.Freddy is slowly moving in closer for the kill,delighting in dragging it out, when it occurs to Nancy to press her arm up against the sizzling pipes that pervade the boiler room she is trapped in. She must have felt the oppressive heat in her dreams and her smart mind did the math:If I can feel the heat, if I believe that it is real,then the sudden pain from burning myself will wake me.And she was right.

But Freddy's reaction to this is what got me to thinking.

Immediately after Nancy scalds herself awake we see Freddy's raised glove shake as if startled,frightened even, and then drop dramatically out of frame. His vocalization even suggest that this sudden act has caused him some discomfort.

Freddy was not expecting that the rules of the Nightmare could be used against him.And certainly not this early in the cat and mouse game.He needs his victims to believe in the realness of the Nightmare for him to have power,so that he can hurt them for real.But then it's Nancy's belief in the realness of the scalding pipes that helped her escape.The shock of Nancy being pulled out of the dream and Freddy losing control of the Nightmare was so much that it even caused Krueger pain.

Up until this moment, Freddy has been in control of the Nightmares.He shaped the dreamscape around his memories of the abandoned boiler room that he spent so many fond murderous times in.He created images of corpses to taunt the mourning.Popped in and out from anywhere.Complete control of his fate and his victims.Designed and directed by his gloved right hand.

And this is the first incident of someone fighting back to the realization that they are in a dream.Breaking his hold.It must take a lot of concentration and power to create the dream worlds.To mold it and constantly retain enough control to hold it in place.Freddy is inside someones mind during all of this and he is up against their own minds will to dream about whatever it wants to dream about. Or would try to dream about in effort to escape the Nightmare.Fighting off the possibilities.

So could this mean that Freddy can not only invade your dreams,control the content, but then also lock you in the Nightmare? Preventing your mind from just thinking of someplace fun.Thinking about a happy memory.Dreaming up a weapon.

Could he also prevent you from waking and escaping as long as you were mentally paralyzed by fear? And even if you weren't controlled by your fear,could he, by being inside your mind, block that part of your thoughts that would make you realize this is just a dream and all you need to do was wake up,taking away Freddy's power to hurt you.