It is the movie that embodies sleep paralysis and often finds these people trapped between the worlds of sleep and waking up in general because of this extraordinary paralysis. These people with sleep paralysis are not completely able to move but are aware of their surroundings while being exposed to disturbing scenes and sounds. The film follows these consecutive events of this disease and learn more about it.
In the faces of these men and women, ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s and spread out everywhere from Los Angeles to Manchester, you can see the genuine terror they suffered - and, in some cases, continue to suffer.
It's compelling viewing, as well as disturbing as hell. Honestly, who needs the spectres of Insidious: Chapter 3 when our own brains are capable of scaring us half to death.
CineVue
January 17, 2017
The Nightmare squanders [its] subject in a shallow, messy and frustrating documentary that tends towards the pseudo-intellectual and paranoid.
It just isn't as informative as it could be. It's plenty scary, and on that level satisfying. It would be great to see Ascher make a full-on horror feature.
While "Room 237" sought evidence for its most outlandish conceits, "The Nightmare" declines to delve. As the testimonies grow repetitive, the strategy suggests willful ignorance.
Ascher plunges us into the actual visions that sleep paralysis creates: the moving silhouette figures, the darkness, the static. The sense of terror is palpable.
Ascher is too content to let repetition of experience take over his film. No sleep studiers or brain experts or anybody else, for that matter, are interviewed.
