An unnerving documentary detailing the stories told by eight men and women suffering from sleep paralysis, The Nightmare makes no effort to paint its disturbing portraits upon a scientific or medical backdrop. No, director Rodney Ascher takes a similar approach to his previous film, 2012 documentary Room 237, which presented nine different rather oddball critical readings of Stanley Kubricks The Shining without fear or favour. The sleep paralysis phenomenon is one where people on the verge of falling asleep or on the cusp of awakening find themselves prisoners in their own bodies: unable to move, speak or react in any way. Often, its accompanied by hallucinations that genuinely terrify the sufferer: night terrors and visions that seem eerily common across different experiences of the condition. Shadowy, sinister figures appear at the door or in the corners of the room; demonic creatures sit, suffocatingly heavy, upon their chests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoPsjWqvwT4 Without probing far into the veracity of each case, Ascher asks whether it might be the verifiable condition of sleep paralysis that has presented society with the tropes of nightmare that we now take for granted: whether demons, devils, alien abduction scenarios and tales of possession and hauntings are symptoms that can be diagnosed, and that have translated to art, literature and religious mania over millennia (rathr than the other way around). Rather than representing home invasions from another plane, have stories of extradimensional evil always been simply all in our heads? Its a persuasive idea, but its Aschers reconstructions of his subjects anecdotal evidence that give the theory the heft that his utterly unscientific film would otherwise lack. Filmed as though lifted directly from popcorn horror flicks like Insidious or Paranormal Activity, these reenactments are incredibly creepy given the real life provenance of the imagery: this is what his subjects actually saw and felt, the disturbing, freakish visions that they actually experienced. Its a film that makes insomnia seem appealing, lets put it that way.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
