The Nightmare

Cutting between various chilling anecdotes of sinister late night visions and horrifying reenactments, The Nightmare manages a tricky balance of visceral fright and sincere investigation. It's a rare non-fiction achievement that earns the ability to freak you out.

More frightening (yet strangely entertaining) than most of today’s narrative horror films.

The human brain, this movie suggests, is the ultimate horror-movie director, and sleep-paralysis hallucinations are just an extreme form of the standard-issue nightmares we all unwillingly create on a regular basis. It’s one thing to be tormented. It’s another thing to face the grim reality that you’re tormenting yourself.

Whether it is the movies that have shaped our dreams or our dreams that have shaped the movies, it’s safe to assume that The Nightmare will find its place in that eternally recurring cycle.

While Ascher brings the experiences to life in a way that could conceivably induce nightmares in casual viewers, the potency of these scenes is ultimately diminished by repetition.

Neither as frightening as a good horror flick nor as enlightening as a straight documentary, Rodney Ascher's The Nightmare borrows from both worlds in its depiction of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Neither a horror story or an enlightening doco, this feature comes across as a confused mess.

I don't like repeating myself here but for this one it looks like I have to, and that's what hurts more then pain is disappointment and that disappointment is what I had for this documentary. The Nightmares is a documentary-horror film exploring the phenomenon of 'Sleep Paralysis' through the eyes of eight very different people. These people often find themselves trapped between the sleeping and waking worlds, totally unable to move but aware of their surroundings while being subject to frequently disturbing sights and sounds. A strange element to these visions is that despite the fact that they know nothing of one another, many see similar ghostly 'shadow men'. Every since I sawed the teaser trailer for The Nightmare I straight away was looking forward to seeing it as it's a documentary about nightmares and people's experience with it and documentary are normally interesting with the right tone and facts. The trailer scared the living crap out of me by it's scary looking creators that these people sawed in they dream and in the documentary they re-create those nightmares and they do look scary. Now after seeing and I got to tell you that **** most disappointing thing since Particle Fever. The Nightmare isn't a terrible documentary, it has it's scary and interesting scenes that will probably haunt you or get you listening more then scared. Some scenes that are really effective and that's to do with the re-creating the monsters, ghost or demons that these people dream about. I can see some people may like and find this documentary more interesting and scary and I got to admit I did in a couple of scenes. But I think most of the positive things I said sadly ends here as these such problems and a lot of things that could have been improved to make it more effective. Now for the problems and there's a lot: The one that kept taking me out of the documentary and made me question the whole thing is the fact that when these people who experience they worse nightmares ever and in the documentary they re-create it to show you as the audience what they experience, but here's the thing every single person in the interview who talks about they nightmare it's always them laying in the bed seeing this thing hover over them or slowly opening the door and walking towards them, after a while it got old really fast and I wanted something new like if they were getting chased by the creature or anything scary then just laying in bed as these something in your room, I mean is that what people dream of laying in they beds. The re-creation for the most part was really well done, but maybe too well done for it's own good. What I mean is that I noticed is that it's always darkly lit even when it's in a dark room you still can see everything in the room. I thought it will be more scary if it was pitch black and when you see this thing in the darkness it's more terrifying as it will put you in the same spot as this guy was experiencing it and I thought that may made it effective, but that's just me giving out ideas. A couple of times while watching the documentary I got a bit bored and started to get uninterested at some parts, because it was the same thing over and over again delivering nothing new just the same repeated pattern used way too many times. Not even the scary dream re-creations could scare me anymore. Overall The Nightmare was a huge disappointment and the documentary was kind of a dull mess and that's what upset's me more. Some people can watch this and maybe like it more then me and if you do like this then good for you, but for me it totally didn't live up to my expectation.

Had the overall potential to be a great movie, but who expects people to believe them without some type of scientific cred. This is a good popcorn flick with some pretty spine tingling imagery, but at the end of the day what are you left with? I, for one, was left with a pseudo-documentary that felt like it belonged on TLC or the Discovery channel rather than a theater. I know sleep paralysis is real and it has actually happened to me before (maybe with not the severity these people experienced), but this documentary has no credentials. How do you expect someone to believe your research if you don't have any sources? I'll generously give it a 3 for the imagery and some of the stories, but I feel as though it doesn't deserve quite that much overall.