The Nightmare is both a documentary and a horror film. That double-identity is difficult to pull off, and many have tried. I've grown tired of "true story" horror films which try to have their cake and eat it too, assuring the audience of their veracity while fudging real events to make them spookier (see The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Deliver Us from Evil, The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror).
The Nightmare does not do that. It's not about scary ghosts but scary experiences. Its people are haunted not by spirits but by something in their own minds that is beyond their understanding.
We meet eight people who suffer from sleep paralysis. Each has had, with varying frequency, crippling vivid nightmares in which he or she finds himself or herself unable to move as frightening things happen around them. They are as real as real life, so real that some have trouble telling the difference.
Director Rodney Ascher portrays each nightmare in gut-wrenching first person. As in his first film, the Shining conspiracy-fan-theory exploration Room 237, there is no explicit directorial voice. Every word we hear (save for some reenactments) comes from the dreamers. We experience each dream as it is being narrated to us by its victim. On a conventional level, it's scary, but the sincerity of the narrator makes it all the more brutal.
I can imagine a decent fictional horror film based around this affliction. In fact, there was one: Insidious, which is cited by one of the film's subjects as a fairly accurate depiction of the disorder. It's a naturally terrifying concept. But Ascher goes a few steps further than merely depicting the subjects' nightmares; he explores the effect the nightmares have on their lives. The questions they raise. The conclusions they lead to. The struggles they cause.
I don't know what kind of research has been done on sleep paralysis. Neither do the afflicted. They're left to figure it out for themselves. Most have been told by family and friends that they are "just bad dreams," and nothing to worry about, echoing common unenlightened assumptions about mental illnesses. We notice that many of the images and sensations in these dreams are consistent among sufferers. The tall, thin shadow men. The tingling sensation in their nerves. The dull, ambient voices. The small black creature on their chest which could be seen as a cat (an image which dates back at least as far as 1787, in Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare").
But then there are the differences. Some are overtly threatening, like a mysterious phone call in which an attacker demands to be let into the house. Others are more ambiguous. One subject reports a childhood dream in which he sees a bright light and is kidnapped by two tall thin figures. As an adult, he watches the film Communion and discovers that Whitley Streiber's version of the conventional alien figure looks very similar. Maybe those who purport to have been abducted by aliens are simply misinterpreting a case of sleep paralysis? Maybe.
Ascher wisely doesn't provide an answer. He stays with his eight subjects as they make sense of their own situation. Some are inspired, as one woman finds her faith when reciting the name "Jesus" brings her out of her dream. Some feel doomed, as one man is convinced that he will one day die in his sleep because of his paralysis. He falls asleep every night thinking it might be the night. And another takes some comfort when she first learns of the concept of sleep paralysis and discovers she's not the only one who suffers from it. Or as she puts it, quite appropriately, "It's a thing!"
**** out of ****
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