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DocumentaryYear2015Duration1h 31mIMDb5.7

The Nightmare

DocumentaryHorror

A look at a frightening condition that plagues thousands; sleep paralysis.

Trailer

Cast

SJ

Stephen Joseph

Shadow Man

NB

Nicole Bosworth

Forrest's Girlfriend

Siegfried Peters

Chris

AW

Age Wilson

Homeless Man #2

Buffy Visick

Mother

Buffy Visick

Alien

ER

Elise Robson

Chris's Girlfriend

Estrella Cristina

Stephen's Girlfriend

LK

Loni Klara

Connie (adult)

Yatoya Toy

Connies Roommate

Johnny Depp

Glen Lantz

Heather Langenkamp

Nancy Thompson

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Comments

10 Comments

Luciole LakamoraMar 20, 2026

البوراق اطارMar 14, 2023

source: The Nightmare

user7210326085057Nov 22, 2022

Okay, I have watched it and again I can't understand why this is so high rated here on IMDb. nothing against mockumentaries or documentaries going wrong but this here was a real nightmare to watch. The only thing I saw was people telling of seeing dark shadows, yawn, in their sleep. They've given some kind of, yawn, electric shock and it opens a world that not everybody sees. Gotta stretch myself before I fall asleep. And we move over more then 90 minutes from one, yaaaaaaawn, person to another all telling the same story. Can someone tell me what is the point of this ultra boring flick? The only thing I was afraid of was the fact that I should fall asleep while watching and would go into some kind of nightmare. Astral projection and stuff like that, no probs with it but being told like they are showing it here, sorry. A bit too much, yaaaaaaaaaawn Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 0/5 Comedy 0/5

Kimora lou Nov 22, 2022

This (horror-)documentary is about sleep paralysis, a phenomenon in which a person either during falling asleep or awakening, temporarily experiences an inability to move, speak, or react. A transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by muscle weakness, often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations and physical experiences. It's been a recognized part of human experience for centuries, but sleep scientists are only just beginning to understand the condition. 'Room 237' director Rodney Ascher's documentary largely eschews hard science to focus on the emotional and psychological toll. He interviews eight sufferers whose lives have been upended by repeated bouts of nocturnal panic and vivid, inescapable hallucinations. 'The Nightmare' wants to be the first properly scary documentary, employing time-honored horror movie techniques in a concerted effort to spook the viewer. But it's here that Ascher slightly oversteps himself. While there is a well-maintained sense of lurking discomfort, the gotcha scenes feel a little cheap. In the end, a straight doc might have been more rewarding, but it entertained nevertheless.

Franckie LyneNov 22, 2022

This film had the potential of being so much better. It started off interviewing the people that suffer from the affliction but then it keeps on doing that for the rest of the film, i was waiting for something to happen. I got so bored with the movie that i kept on checking the time to see how much time had gone of the film. Boring, unfulfilling, tedious, these are just some words to describe the film. YES, there was one scene that showed how much potential the film had, it's a shame that the rest of the film didn't have scenes like this in it. I was always waiting for something to happen, don't get me wrong some scenes were quite good but i still see it as a wasted opportunity.

👾NEYO SAN😎Nov 22, 2022

If you try to make a mix between a horror movie and a documentary, atleast do one of them right. Yes this has some jumspcares, bit of tension and some ok looking imageries. But with it's lazy, unoriginal attempts at creating some actual horror value make it less than an average horror movie. Even bigger issue is the "documentary" part. You can't just have scripted interviews back to back and call it a documentary. Where is the informational side of this so called documentary? As a horror movie, this is maybe a 3 or 4 star piece. As a documentary, a crisp 1 star. Or better said, this shouldn't be labeled as a documentary at all.

⚜️✨B R A Z I L I✨⚜️Nov 22, 2022

The Nightmare is a genuinely scary look into the real life experiences of people suffering with sleep paralysis. It's fascinating to hear first hand what it is that the victims are experiencing, particularly when you see how their stories overlap with shared or similar visions. The reconstructions that play also draw you into the experience yourself, so it almost plays out more like a horror film than a documentary. Therein lies my biggest gripe about this film, it's not really an examination of the phenomenon, just a retelling of a group of peoples night terrors. At no point is there a medical or scientific point of view on the subject; all the "evidence" presented is anecdotal. Not only this, the editing almost tries to lean toward a spiritual viewpoint, which is disappointing as instead of getting to learn about this condition it tends to feel more like a religious propaganda piece, going so far as to claim that the only defence against this particular nightmare is the word "jesus". Entertaining, but not overly useful if your hoping to learn something.

Louloud.kmsNov 22, 2022

There's little here that's of any value by the end of the film. Waste of time, feels much longer than its stated runtime. I had hoped that the film makers would present the initial stories of the people suffering from sleep paralysis or night terrors or whatever they're experiencing before introducing a neurologist or researcher to explain more about the sleep cycle and what these people are going through. Instead, we're left with a wishy-washy bunch of unrelated and dissimilar ghost stories. It might have been interesting to hear about the history of night time visitations from monsters and demon and how those shifted into witches or aliens as time went on. No, instead we are told stories about how people claim to have contracted their nightmares from someone telling them them. We hear from a guy who claims that he and his girlfriend experienced a shared dream, and from people who were driven to Jesus by their demons. At least Room 237 made some pretence of trying to find outside "experts" to refer to .

gabriel djabaNov 22, 2022

Very very very boring documentary movie how someone finds it creepy I don't have idea. But it's not my cup of tea.

SyamelNov 22, 2022

So, I went to go see this movie because of another review I read that said it was similar to a movie called the BaBadook. It really is not. The movie is a documentary about sleep paralysis, and it interviews eight people with the condition, and goes over their shared experiences with it. It seems likes an interesting topic, although the Nightmare makes it seem that there was not enough info on the subject other than the experiences of the people who have it, which is most likely the reason why this doc overuses dramatizations overlapped with the people telling stories. The dramatizations were used to show how scary the experience was to the subjects. Each having a shared "dream" of shadowmen haunting them as they try to sleep. The dramatizations did not succeed in making we scared, however. It's definitely no The BaBadook. As a documentary, I'll give the filmmakers credit with being even with all the subjects. I could tell that the filmmakers were indifferent with one of the subjects, but they stayed fair with the material. The filmmakers also tired to film each subject's story within a narrative that they created, but this actually made some of the stories uninteresting due to lack of info. I like the subject matter, but I found the movie boring, and I wished I really liked it better.

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