The Nightmare (Rodney Ascher)

[Ezee E]

IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3317522/?ref_=nv_sr_3)

http://www.sundance.org/images/filmguide/2015/15308-1-1100.jpg

[ciaoelor]

As someone who has experienced sleep paralysis before I can safely say that sleeping on your stomach or side helps to avoid it.

[Ezee E]

Bump.

[Gittes]

This is pretty good! I might add more later, but here are some quick and early thoughts for now:

I wasn't quite as receptive to it as I thought I would be, but it's still thoroughly fascinating. Ascher organizes the film into different sections, each of which is preceded by an ominous title card and focuses on a particular idea or question. This is partly how the film remains propulsive and dynamic. Towards that same end, the recollections of the subjects are recreated in a varied array of thoughtfully mounted scenes. Here, Ascher occasionally meets the challenge of approximating something like oneiric trauma. Some very creepy images ensue. At other times, though, the film's aspirations toward horror can feel overzealous and awkwardly at odds with what's onscreen (I've seen others speak fondly of Ascher's "lo-fi aesthetic," but this may have been an impediment at times). There are instances that unfold quite momentously -- parts that seem to confidently announce themselves as "scary" -- but end up feeling somewhat muted: a notch or two away from being genuinely terrifying. Unfortunately, then, the horrific potency of The Nightmare swells and disperses over the course of the film.

While there's undeniable éclat to Ascher's style, I couldn't help but speculate about what other filmmakers might have achieved with this subject. David Robert Mitchell comes to mind, since he announced himself, through It Follows, as a skilled purveyor of legitimately terrifying cinematic images: the kind that not only shock and assault, but whose bona fide strangeness powerfully ferments in the mind (Lynch, of course, is the master in this respect). This is not to say that this film is without any lingering force, but I think the experience could have been amplified and fine-tuned in favour of more indelible evocations of nightmares. I don't want to overemphasize my criticisms, however, as there's a lot to admire here. Much of what unfolds is, at the very least, sufficiently disquieting. There are no colossal misfires, and the unsettling atmosphere is well sustained throughout.

One of The Nightmare's more salient pleasures/horrors is the vividly conveyed sense of another world that is mysteriously adjacent to our own and home to deeply malevolent demonic creatures and shadow figures. These are the interlopers who gain ingress to the subjects' bedrooms during bouts of sleep paralysis. Once inside, they observe, taunt, and promise imminent death. There's more, of course, but I don't want to risk spoiling the experience. The previous criticisms notwithstanding, Ascher really does a good job of stylizing these nightly visitations and staging a variety of memorable psychic skirmishes and torments. One standout example involves an unknown cellphone call which, as told and presented, struck me as one of the more recognizably nightmarish moments. It features precisely the kind of weird details and alarming tonal shifts that accompany the worst bad dreams. In another instance, Ascher relies on an interesting formal gambit: he manipulates the footage into a staggered succession of still images and thereby delineates a kind of dreamlike space. I found this to be a pretty effective way of gesturing toward the temporal and spatial peculiarities of dreams. This section is also notable because it includes one of several moments in the film where an unfamiliar nightly visitor suggests an already established acquiantceship: they know us and, somehow, we also know them.

Naturally, the sheer weirdness of such details only lingers uncomfortably, unresolved and inexplicable. This is essential to the film's enduring aftereffect. On that note, one of Ascher's smartest maneuvers is setting up the film itself as a kind of cinematic contagion (an idea that is very memorably introduced at the beginning, with its incorporation of cameras and screens, and then complemented throughout its running time). We're told stories about how victims of sleep paralysis recounted their experiences to friends who then went on to have their own experiences, etc. There's also a whole section dedicated to the intersection between the torments of sleep paralysis and cinema itself, which is really great. I'm wary of giving too much away about the films that are noted, but attention is paid to A Nightmare on Elm Street and several others (there's also consideration of a scene from a movie that I have not seen, but which I do recall reading accounts of by other people; I definitely understand why many found this particular scene to be so upsetting!).

In its wake, this movie leaves behind lots of questions and a decent amount of unease (there aren't a lot of scholarly explanations or hypotheses, or anything like that; Ascher's principal concern lies with his subjects and their respective struggles with sleep paralysis, as well as their own takes on the significance of their experiences). I sauntered out into a crisp night feeling newly sensitive to the fascination of sleep paralysis, whose strangeness and ample mysteries are certainly well honoured by the film. More than that, though, I was trying to not think about any of it: a desperate bid to obviate The Nightmare's apparently infectious power (like many other viewers, then, I was now afraid to fall asleep).

[Spun Lepton]

Curious if I'm the only one on Match Cut who's experienced these first-hand. I haven't seen the movie. Unsure whether I will.

[Winston*]

Curious if I'm the only one on Match Cut who's experienced these first-hand. I haven't seen the movie. Unsure whether I will.

Nah. I have them from time to time. They're no fun.

[Gittes]

I forgot to mention that this movie reminded me of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? called "The Tale of the Super Specs":

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