That was an excellent one.

A different way of telling a story

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Gosh, I wish this movie wasn't so technically flawed! You know what, I'll get to that in a minute. This flick is pretty cool, it is a documentary about people with Sleep Paralysis, a condition that causes you to feel petrified in the moments between wake and sleep and is accompanied by horrifying visions. This is the fuel for nightmares, so the title is pretty well suited to the film. The reenactments are pretty good, there are a couple of lame jump scares, you see them coming, but they still make you jump – not scary, but still gets the blood moving. Where The Nightmare shines, though, is in the reenactments with the shadow figures; they're creepy, they're moving around your house at night, they're watching you sleep, and they might be trying to steal your soul.Sadly, though the visuals in the reenactments can be pretty good, there are some massive editing issues for me. The film has a self reflexive participatory mode (using that documentary film class right there) and while mode works fine for the film, I think it steals a little thunder from the reenactments, which is really just too bad.More than the mode of the film causing it to be a little rough is the massive number of jump-cuts. I think that the director has watched too many YouTube videos and thinks that jump-cuts are normal and okay. Sadly, he's wrong, and his film suffers because of it. The jump-cuts are distracting for two reasons: 1. Visually they are just distracting, they look weird, and you notice them which draws you out of the story; and 2. you start wondering exactly what was cut out. Once you start wondering about this, you have a whole new level of distraction, and you start to wonder if the stories these people are telling just aren't as good as you're being led to believe.All in all, The Nightmare is pretty good, and I think people should watch it. Not only is the film informative, but wonderfully entertaining and a little scary. So, turn out the lights, look up The Nightmare on Netflix, and get your educational-horror on!

I have scarier nightmares than this sorry lot (Spoiler Alert: There is a plug in this, ahem, so-called "documentary" for Evangelical Christianity) on a regular basis, i.e. at least once per month and I just put them down as that, scary dreams. People have bad dreams. In some of those dreams, we cannot move. Big deal.

I thought this documentary was very well put together. I liked the personal feel, it almost felt like you were along for the ride with the interviewer as he dug into these wild stories that were seemingly stranger than fiction. The editing was good as well in the way it hopped seamlessly back and forth through each interview to paint a larger picture of what sleep paralysis means to the sufferers and the commonality of their experiences. The theatrical reenactments were hokey overall but didn't detract from the main point of the film, set a spooky tone and made it slightly more watchable as it goes through the stories.As for the subject matter, I wish I could give this 10 stars! This was an incredible look into the anecdotal evidence that continues to support the enigma that is sleep paralysis. The director did a great job of portraying their belief of the significance of SP through the jarring stories recounted by actual SP sufferers. Some of the biggest hints revealed in this exploration is how SP seems to seed itself in others simply after sharing experiences verbally. I think this phenomenon would be well studied with a mimetic lens and would perhaps be aided by ideas from the fields of biofeedback and mindfulness. I think the way some interviewees describe the entity as consuming the substance of their fear is very powerful in portraying the mechanism of parasitism of certain types of memes. The experience of the interviewee named Forrest with the hippy girl and how he was given the message of not fearing the manifestations so as to not empower them supports the idea that somehow these manifestations consume fear or negative emotion. And perhaps more importantly it suggests a reason why humans all over this planet can be experiencing very similar details of their dreams (the colour red, red eyes, the shadow people). It is my belief that when you dream, your soul is activated by dmt that your brain produces and this allows the reduction of the conscious projection of reality. This allows you to receive information from the source. Some people would call this god or gaia, but to be clear it is the source of all consciousness and all beginnings stem from this point. In aboriginal cultures worldwide, there is the archetype of the "see-er". This is someone who is gifted with messages from realms between this one and the source and teaches humanity these messages and to "see" as well. I think that the people in this documentary are all "see-ers" to different extents and Forrest and the guy in plaid (sorry didn't catch your name!) are the most gifted. As for the message that is being received, I believe it is fairly clear. I think that first of all it should be realized that the powerful fear typified by these experiences is natural and very human but it is something that is meant to be overcome and not oppressing. This is proved when the shadow people are confronted they retreat immediately. So then why are SP suffers being constantly berated by such powerful themes of fear? Because it is meant to awaken them in their waking state and call reality into question. The guy in plaid said when he has these experiences, it doesn't make him want to go out and work a 9-5 (who would) obviously he isn't saying it makes him lazy but that he feels he doesn't ft into society anymore. So it seems axiomatic that these experiences are pushing us away from our modern construction of reality. It is my belief that the shadow people etc. are a manifestation of the illness that exists in human culture today and that is why each individual will attach a different narrative to the information they are receiving (i.e. the woman seeing a cat with red eyes and the guy in plaid seeing an 8' tall being with red eyes). Like the guy in plaid tried to explain, when they are in this sate they are receiving "raw data" as he put it, so the source information is always translated by the narrative of the individual. So a pretty heavy message overall but I think its actually a message of hope. and to me the fact that there is a place for this discussion in western media, albeit marginalized, is also very hopeful. I think the more we share stories like these, that really confront out beliefs about what dreams are and what reality is, the more room we have to grow scientifically and build a terminology of dreams. The next step I would suggest in studying this would be collecting severe SP sufferers on a broad scale and examining the egg results via machine learning and just see what kind of patterns come out. As well I think it would be wise to organize group therapy for SP sufferers with a base in mindfulness to raise awareness about these experiences internally and externally in the community.

The Nightmare follows eight people from around the world that are interviewed for questions on sleep paralysis. That, is what this documentary is. The Nightmare is a unique and eccentric horror/documentary that just creeps under your skin and can really make you shiver. The movie follows each of these people and from each one we are given a perception by the interviewee and how he/she has experienced sleep paralysis. This movie does exceedingly well in recreating the dreams and moments of paralysis as it's just incredibly creepy and freaky. I think the most notable part of this film if anything is in all the way it's been obligated and produced to provide great amounts of scary themes. It just works. And on top of that, the sleep paralysis topic is just great. It's so interesting to learn about something that only so many people will experience as sleep paralysis is barely touched on. But if you're looking for a strong and good documentary as well as a horror movie; The Nightmare gets the job done.