Skepticism prevented me from seeing how Room 237 director Rodney Ascher could make a compelling feature documentary on the subject of sleep paralysis. The Nightmare is not only a mind-grabber, but a sphincter-clencher. Even those viewers who do not struggle with sleep paralysis — read: about 93 percent of us — should find it unsettling all the same. After all, bad dreams are bad dreams: relatable, no matter what might scare you.
Yet sleep paralysis is more than mere bad dream. It’s a condition in which the sleeper hallucinates a terrifying scenario, yet feel physically unable to move a muscle in reaction. In interviewing eight people spread about all jagged corners of our nation, Ascher finds startling commonalities in their stories, which Nightmare re-enacts with disturbing precision and visuals simultaneously simple and creepy as hell: shadows, static, glowing red eyes. (Hello, darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk to you again, about why on earth you’re doing this to me!)
I should have known better; the guy made an eerie, hair-raising short about the Screen Gems logo that, after three viewings, still gives me the shivers. The Nightmare scares while serving the interest of science, and raises an intriguing theory about the correlation of events reported by sleep paralysis sufferers and by people claiming to be alien abductee; in other words, the latter may “just” be the former and don’t know it.
Anyway, good night! Sleep tight! Don’t let your anus be probed! —Rod Lott