The Nightmare

Rodney Ascher is a weird guy. I don’t talk about directors of documentaries a lot, but this is important. I have technically reviewed three of his works on my site. He did the Q segment of The ABCs of Death 2, which I honestly barely remember. He also did the documentary Room 237 which felt a lot like torture. That is a very polarizing movie and whatever a lot of people got out of it, I got none of it.

And now he is directing The Nightmare documentary, which is a bit of a hybrid documentary. It involves real people, telling presumably real stories and anecdotes, but also recreations of what they are talking about. At this point you might be asking, “Well, what are they talking about?!” and if you were, you aren’t very good at context clues.

They are talking about nightmares of course! But not any of your sissy girl falling out of bed nightmares. No, a much serious and scarier phenomenon known as sleep paralysis which affects dozens of people world wide. Dozens!

It is also one of the scariest things I have ever heard about that could potentially be a giant elaborate ruse to scare me.

Holy fuck, it is working too!

I don’t remember when I first heard about sleep paralysis, but it was probably 4 or more years ago on the internet. A lot of people told similar stories, about how they would sometimes dream of themselves lying in bed but they couldn’t move their body at all. They would try to, but nothing would work. Some of them would imagine some dark entity/cat/demon sitting on their chest, preventing from moving. That sounds terrifying enough, but it isn’t even the scariest parts.

Others could see intruders in their room. Literal dark shadow shapes, static shapes, alien shapes, whatever their messed up psychosis wants. It could involve the creepiest conversations. It could involve other people they know and love. But they just have to lay there and take it.

I don’t think my crazy ramblings trying to explain it all are the best way to learn about this stuff though. Personal anecdotes from those who experience it with vivid detail? That is the way to go. Or better yet, anecdotes with recreations just to terrify you even more.

The editing on this hybrid documentary was great. The music department and the recreations were very on point and would have had me on the edge of my seat the entire time if I was in a chair. If you must know, I was definitely laying down as I watched this documentary.

Of course, this documentary might not be the best idea either. There are reports of people gaining some sleep paralysis after hearing about it from someone else. So I might have screwed a portion of the readers of this review, and for that I don’t apologize. These are the type of risks you must take when you go to a site owned and operated by Gorgons, after all.