The Nightmare

source: The Nightmare

Okay, I have watched it and again I can't understand why this is so high rated here on IMDb. nothing against mockumentaries or documentaries going wrong but this here was a real nightmare to watch. The only thing I saw was people telling of seeing dark shadows, yawn, in their sleep. They've given some kind of, yawn, electric shock and it opens a world that not everybody sees. Gotta stretch myself before I fall asleep. And we move over more then 90 minutes from one, yaaaaaaawn, person to another all telling the same story. Can someone tell me what is the point of this ultra boring flick? The only thing I was afraid of was the fact that I should fall asleep while watching and would go into some kind of nightmare. Astral projection and stuff like that, no probs with it but being told like they are showing it here, sorry. A bit too much, yaaaaaaaaaawn Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 0/5 Comedy 0/5

This (horror-)documentary is about sleep paralysis, a phenomenon in which a person either during falling asleep or awakening, temporarily experiences an inability to move, speak, or react. A transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by muscle weakness, often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations and physical experiences. It's been a recognized part of human experience for centuries, but sleep scientists are only just beginning to understand the condition. 'Room 237' director Rodney Ascher's documentary largely eschews hard science to focus on the emotional and psychological toll. He interviews eight sufferers whose lives have been upended by repeated bouts of nocturnal panic and vivid, inescapable hallucinations. 'The Nightmare' wants to be the first properly scary documentary, employing time-honored horror movie techniques in a concerted effort to spook the viewer. But it's here that Ascher slightly oversteps himself. While there is a well-maintained sense of lurking discomfort, the gotcha scenes feel a little cheap. In the end, a straight doc might have been more rewarding, but it entertained nevertheless.

This film had the potential of being so much better. It started off interviewing the people that suffer from the affliction but then it keeps on doing that for the rest of the film, i was waiting for something to happen. I got so bored with the movie that i kept on checking the time to see how much time had gone of the film. Boring, unfulfilling, tedious, these are just some words to describe the film. YES, there was one scene that showed how much potential the film had, it's a shame that the rest of the film didn't have scenes like this in it. I was always waiting for something to happen, don't get me wrong some scenes were quite good but i still see it as a wasted opportunity.

If you try to make a mix between a horror movie and a documentary, atleast do one of them right. Yes this has some jumspcares, bit of tension and some ok looking imageries. But with it's lazy, unoriginal attempts at creating some actual horror value make it less than an average horror movie. Even bigger issue is the "documentary" part. You can't just have scripted interviews back to back and call it a documentary. Where is the informational side of this so called documentary? As a horror movie, this is maybe a 3 or 4 star piece. As a documentary, a crisp 1 star. Or better said, this shouldn't be labeled as a documentary at all.

The Nightmare is a genuinely scary look into the real life experiences of people suffering with sleep paralysis. It's fascinating to hear first hand what it is that the victims are experiencing, particularly when you see how their stories overlap with shared or similar visions. The reconstructions that play also draw you into the experience yourself, so it almost plays out more like a horror film than a documentary. Therein lies my biggest gripe about this film, it's not really an examination of the phenomenon, just a retelling of a group of peoples night terrors. At no point is there a medical or scientific point of view on the subject; all the "evidence" presented is anecdotal. Not only this, the editing almost tries to lean toward a spiritual viewpoint, which is disappointing as instead of getting to learn about this condition it tends to feel more like a religious propaganda piece, going so far as to claim that the only defence against this particular nightmare is the word "jesus". Entertaining, but not overly useful if your hoping to learn something.

There's little here that's of any value by the end of the film. Waste of time, feels much longer than its stated runtime. I had hoped that the film makers would present the initial stories of the people suffering from sleep paralysis or night terrors or whatever they're experiencing before introducing a neurologist or researcher to explain more about the sleep cycle and what these people are going through. Instead, we're left with a wishy-washy bunch of unrelated and dissimilar ghost stories. It might have been interesting to hear about the history of night time visitations from monsters and demon and how those shifted into witches or aliens as time went on. No, instead we are told stories about how people claim to have contracted their nightmares from someone telling them them. We hear from a guy who claims that he and his girlfriend experienced a shared dream, and from people who were driven to Jesus by their demons. At least Room 237 made some pretence of trying to find outside "experts" to refer to .

Very very very boring documentary movie how someone finds it creepy I don't have idea. But it's not my cup of tea.

So, I went to go see this movie because of another review I read that said it was similar to a movie called the BaBadook. It really is not. The movie is a documentary about sleep paralysis, and it interviews eight people with the condition, and goes over their shared experiences with it. It seems likes an interesting topic, although the Nightmare makes it seem that there was not enough info on the subject other than the experiences of the people who have it, which is most likely the reason why this doc overuses dramatizations overlapped with the people telling stories. The dramatizations were used to show how scary the experience was to the subjects. Each having a shared "dream" of shadowmen haunting them as they try to sleep. The dramatizations did not succeed in making we scared, however. It's definitely no The BaBadook. As a documentary, I'll give the filmmakers credit with being even with all the subjects. I could tell that the filmmakers were indifferent with one of the subjects, but they stayed fair with the material. The filmmakers also tired to film each subject's story within a narrative that they created, but this actually made some of the stories uninteresting due to lack of info. I like the subject matter, but I found the movie boring, and I wished I really liked it better.

The Nightmare (2015) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Interesting documentary that caused quit the stir at the Sundance Film Festival. This documentary interviews eight different people from around the globe who all suffer from the same thing: sleep paralysis. Through their spoken words and re-enactments, we see their haunting visions as they go to sleep and find themselves unable to move and possibly be visited by demons. THE NIGHTMARE is yet another horror movie that has come along and has many calling it the scariest movie since (fill in the horror movie name). Director Rodney Ascher, who previously made the bizarre THE SHINING documentary ROOM 237, manages to bring his rather unique and original vision to this tale, which is part documentary and part horror movie. There's no question that the subject matter makes for a very interesting documentary and I found a lot of the stories to be fascinating. I mean, most people go to sleep to rest and find some sort of peace so just imagine if you dreaded going to sleep knowing that something terrifying and evil was about to visit you. Some of the stories told are pretty effective including one man who remembers as far back as being in a crib and seeing two figures standing over him. Shadow people are mentioned throughout the documentary as several of the people claim to have encountered them. They talk about these dark, shadow figures who approach them and of course the people are pretty much unable to move so there's nothing they can do to stop it. I think one of the flaws with the film is that we're really given no information on what this could be. There's a lot of speculation on what it exactly is but perhaps a sleep expert being interviewed would have helped. Another problem I had with the film is that the best stories are told right at the front when we're introduced to the character. After hearing their initial stories, what follows isn't nearly as effective and this is a 100-minute movie. Without any "outside" interviews, the stories become somewhat boring after a while so as a documentary it would have been nice throwing something else into the mix. With that said, THE NIGHTMARE is certainly worth watching once as there are some effective moments.