Nightmare, The (2015)
Starring Siegfried Peters, Steven Yvette, Yatoya Toy, Age Wilson
Directed by Rodney Ascher
Full disclosure: I walked out of Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, an exploration into the many conspiracy theories surround The Shining and the people that believe them. Its legitimately interesting – if exceptionally bizarre – material was mired in a profoundly misguided approach that makes it feel more like a long YouTube video than an actual documentary. Despite this, I was interested in his follow-up, The Nightmare, an exploration of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis told through the eyes of eight people who have experienced it. Unlike Room 237, I didn’t walk out The Nightmare, though I did find the experiences related by the film’s subjects to be far more tolerable than this pseudo-doc that elicits more unintentional laughter than legitimate scares.
This is troubling because sleep paralysis is truly one of the most terrifying things anyone can experience in their lifetime. I’ve fallen victim to the “old hag” once, though my episode was relatively tame when compared to those told in the film, as a little bit of buzzing and the inability to move for about fifteen seconds was all my brain could muster. Through a mix of face-to-face interviews and reenactments, we’re taken through a jumbled journey of discovery as the eight subjects recount how they first experienced the phenomenon, its development and impact on their lives, and what they believe is causing it. Their situations are varied yet similar; Ascher’s goal is, in part, to highlight how real people experience and rationalize what is little more than a sleeping disorder, albeit one that isn’t fully understood.
In this he succeeds, with the film forgoing almost any mention of the science behind sleep paralysis in favor of personal stories that suggests the similarities might not be all that coincidental. The subjects take us through a typical episode, the sounds, images, and feelings recounted in terrifying detail, with Ascher occasionally popping in to ask them questions. One man, whose first episode allegedly occurred when he was barely two years old, relates how every night he would be visited by alien-like creatures with glowing skin reminiscent of television static; another tells of how she once fell victim to two giant black blobs that floated toward her while she lay in her bed, unable to move. For them, certainly a frightening ordeal, but the film interprets them in such a way that its players become unintentional comedic fodder rather than unfortunate victims.
It’s in these recreations where Ascher seeks to blend the elements of a horror film with that of a traditional documentary. Featuring cheesy animated sequences and laughable voiceovers, these reenactments highlight the images and situations with so little care and respect that it makes you think the whole thing is an elaborate joke designed to poke fun at the subjects. They’re all punctuated by infrequent jump scares and audio stings that are, perhaps a little too ironically, scarier than the stuff that’s actually supposed to be scary. But it’s not just the lack of frights that drags the film down; it still could have been an interesting documentary without being a scary one. Instead, by allowing the reenactments to dominate the already too similar ordeals, it just becomes repetitive.
Notably absent from the film are experiences from anyone beyond the Americas and the UK. Given how pervasive sleep paralysis is among dozens of cultures around the world, each with their own fascinating mythology and spiritual or philosophical explanations for why it occurs, it’s a wonder why he didn’t choose from a more diverse sample of sufferers to explore this. Rather than accept the science associated with sleep paralysis, most of the film’s subjects come to a conclusion that is deeply rooted in religion or philosophy. Imagine how powerful – and educational – this would be if Ascher explored the phenomenon as experienced by those from other cultures! Instead we get the same thing told ad nauseam, their experiences blending into a mess of ineffectual imagery. Every culture has its own idea of what causes sleep paralysis, and by utilizing eight incredibly similar people from mostly similar backgrounds, The Nightmare misses out on the chance to dig deeper into how this phenomenon transcends cultures and religions into a seemingly shared experience.
As such, The Nightmare represents an incredibly myopic viewpoint of a truly global phenomenon. Sleep paralysis has a rich and diverse mythology, its effects plaguing people and cultures all around the world, but beyond a few brief mentions, the film barely scratches the surface. Instead we’re treated to the bare minimum: a stripped down and anemic vision of something that is anything but. Those who regularly experience sleep paralysis might better relate to the material and thus appreciate the slipshod visual representations of these episodes, but I don’t, and I didn’t. It’s not scary, it’s not informative, and worst of all, reverence for the subject matter and its sufferers is almost non-existent.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
