Review: The Nightmare (2015)

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A really creepy and fun documentary about the sleep disorder known as “sleep paralysis.” Directed by Rodney Ascher, who brought us Room 237 in 2013, about the obsessive audience reaction to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The Nightmare is different, although there is a similarity in structure. It’s a documentary, but there are no “official” talking heads. It’s full-immersion into the topic, led by those who suffer from sleep paralysis. Complete with very frightening re-enactments. Really interesting.

Have any of you reading experienced sleep paralysis? I never have, and for that I am thankful.

My review of The Nightmare is up at Rogerebert.com.

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24 Responses to Review: The Nightmare (2015)

  1. K.C. Russell says:

    Gosh, this happens to me all the time, but it’s never scary. Although I could definitely see it being that way. I think of it as waking up out of sequence. You regain consciousness but are unable to move for a few moments. It really feels like something is sitting on your chest – sleeping flat on my back might be a trigger, instead on my side.(maybe a connection with sleep apnea?) And then your body ‘reappears’ and you can breathe and feel your toes, etc.

    The most interesting time, years ago, I woke up and sunlight was streaming into the room. I could not move. The ‘incubus’ creature from the famous Fusel painting was sitting on my chest. I actually saw this. It turned its head and looked straight into my eyes and winked. I recognized the thing, of course, so I knew it was just a dream. I would have laughed but, you know, paralyzed. I remember thinking, this is so cool. The incubus – amazingly clear and detailed – then just faded away. Could never figure out why that occurred. Haven’t seen him since.

    Now if I could just get that to happen with Kate Upton…

    • sheila says:

      K.C. Russell – wow!! Thanks for sharing that – it all sounds so terrifying and I am fascinated that you didn’t experience that terror. Is it because you had an awareness of “This is a dream”? Or it’s like watching a movie and you know you’re safe? Did that come into play?

      // The ‘incubus’ creature from the famous Fusel painting was sitting on my chest. I actually saw this. It turned its head and looked straight into my eyes and winked. //

      That is incredible!!

      I really wonder how this happens physiologically – why so many people see the same thing. I love that you saw it as a joke, though!

      // Now if I could just get that to happen with Kate Upton… //

      hahahaha yeah really!

      • K.C. Russell says:

        Definitely knew it was a dream, a dream fragment. I have this happen about once a week or so. My subconscious is running its own program, I guess. It’s usually fairly late in the morning when it happens. Bedroom is bright, etc. Non-scary. In the middle of the night, it would scare the piss out of you.

        Sometimes, I can direct what happens in some weird way. It’s fun, I don’t want to wake up. And I have had instances where I lose track of what’s real and what’s dreaming. I’ve had incredibly vivid dreams of flying – over the house, over trees in my yard, all highly recognizable places – and when I wake up, I leap of of bed to run outside and go flying! Total bummer when I’m halfway out the door and remember I can’t actually do that. lol

        I always thought the incubus monster was kind of comical. It looks confused. Like ‘ why am I in this bedroom? And who is this lady?’ That horse’s head poking in through the curtains, on the other hand, yeah that’s a nightmare.

        • sheila says:

          KC – I am envious of your vivid dream-life. I used to have one and then something happened – I don’t know – it’s rare that I remember dreams now. I get so excited when I do.

          // Like ‘ why am I in this bedroom? And who is this lady?’ //

          hahaha almost like it’s the incubus having the nightmare, not the lady.

        • Desirae says:

          I think what you’re describing is called lucid dreaming.

  2. jackie says:

    I. Can’t. Even. I didn’t know this movie existed. I get this every few months or so. It is frankly terrifying. I can’t scream but I can kind of moan and Stuart has been instructed to lift me up. It’s the worst feeling ever.

  3. jackie says:

    Once someone moves my body, like Stuart kind of lifting me up off my pillow, I can move again and then wake up completely. The kids make fun of me because they hear me kind of moaning like a ghost, but I can’t talk or scream. I am awake but I am completely paralyzed and it’s terrifying.

  4. Desirae says:

    Everyone in my family has had this except for me, which makes me very nervous. They call it ‘getting hagged’. I did once wake up and briefly see a shadowy figure standing above my bed much like those described here but there was no paralysis involved. I knocked everything off my nightstand flailing around.

    Weird sleep problems run in my Dad’s family. One of Uncles used to become violent when he was sleepwalking – he broke windows, tried to jump off a balcony more than once. He’d cry for his mother the whole time he was doing it.

    My Dad had a condition he called ‘hallucina-dreaming’ that I think is actually a kind of narcolepsy. He used to wake up but would still see whatever he had been dreaming about (inevitably a nightmare). And it would just keep going until something startled him out of it. Once when he was a kid he ran up the railroad tracks behind his house for about twenty minutes with his older brother chasing after him. His brother said that every time he got close enough to grab him my father would speed up and get out of reach. My Dad swears that’s because even though my uncle was behind him, he could see Uncle Cecil in FRONT of him.

    I used to do the same ‘hallucina-dreaming’ thing when I was very small but I don’t remember the details very clearly. Just that I was afraid of things coming out of the walls. Poor Dad kept having episodes right into his forties. Interestingly enough, he also experienced a strong sense of deja-vu at Nightmare on Elm Street. He wondered if Wes Craven had the same condition.

    Altered states of consciousness are a trip.

    • sheila says:

      Desirae – wow wow wow.

      The comedian Mike Birbiglia has a sleep condition where he does crazy things in his sleep – he jumped out of a second-story window once. He now has to sleep encased in a sleeping bag for his own protection. He did a whole comedy show about it – I think NPR covered it, if you’re interested. My friend Allison and I saw him perform in Boston – he’s wonderful – but the stories he tells about this sleep thing – and his girlfriend waking up to see him fighting something invisible (he said that there was a “jackal” in the room) – and then the second-story window incident … Just amazing.

      Elias Canetti in his book Crowds and Power (really really good) says at one point that we are so vulnerable when we sleep that it is amazing that we have survived, evolutionarily.

    • sheila says:

      Oh, and “getting hagged” – my friend Odie said on FB that he has had this since he was a child – His grandmother had it too and called it having “a witch riding on your back.”

  5. Helena says:

    I’ve had this happen a lot when I was younger, just waking up with a ‘presence’ in the room, and unable to move or scream. Horrible and disturbing at the time. Had no idea it was a ‘thing’.

    • sheila says:

      Horrible!

      After seeing the doc and hearing the stories, I am very grateful that I have never experienced this.

  6. Natalie says:

    I’ve had this happen a few times now. The first time – I think I was about 26 at the time, so it’s not like it was a childhood thing – was by far the scariest because I had no idea what sleep paralysis was. I thought it was a nightmare. It wasn’t until months later that I dated a guy who suffered from it regularly, and he explained to me what sleep paralysis was, that I was like, “OMG, that happened to me!” It’s happened a few times since then, and I’ve been able to recognize what’s happening and mentally talk myself through it. The hallucinations are the worst part for me. The first time, I had an ocean waves and flutes relaxation CD playing, and I started hearing voices in the music – The Omen-style Gregorian chanting. I remember realizing that the music wasn’t supposed to have vocals, and I tried to reach for the CD player to turn it off, only to discover that I couldn’t move. Which, you know, resulted in utter panic. That was 10 years ago, and I still can’t listen to those ocean waves CDs anymore.

    • Natalie says:

      I’m interested, by the way, by the idea that so many people struggle to believe that it’s a physical ailment and believe that there’s a spiritual component. I was RELIEVED to find out it was neurological.

    • sheila says:

      // The Omen-style Gregorian chanting. //

      Holy shit. That is terrifying.

  7. Martin says:

    I’ve only had one memorable experience of sleep paralysis, and it was the worst.

    The previous morning I went to see my great-uncle in the hospital, where he was dying of lung failure. There was a tube going down his throat, attached to a machine that was supposed to breathe for him. The doctor said the machine wouldn’t support him for much longer, and at noon they were going to take the tube out–after that, his lungs would either work again, or not. It was likely he would die before the end of the day.

    My family watched the tube come out of his dry throat, so raw he couldn’t swallow at first, much less speak. A nurse dripped water into his mouth from a dropper. When we could see he was swallowing again, my grandfather told the assistant nurse to bring his brother a popsicle, a grape popsicle. The nurse left and came back a moment later to say they only had orange popsicles. My great-uncle’s weak eyes gave her the most withering, don’t-give-a-fuck look I’ve ever seen a person give, and he opened his cracked lips for the orange popsicle. When we left the hospital he was breathing, unevenly and laboriously.

    Sometime during the following night I woke up just enough to realize that I’d fallen asleep with my mouth open. There was a glass of water on my bedside table. When I tried to reach for it, my body didn’t respond. I had sensation in my entire body–in my desiccated throat most of all–but no power to move. My head was turned on the pillow away from the glass of water, but nonetheless I thought I could see it. I’m not actually sure whether my eyes were open or not, but still I could stare at this glass of water on my bedside table. It seemed to be close to morning–the room was full of dim grey light. It felt like hours before I was able to turn over and reach the glass of water. I spilled some of it on myself, but some of it I drank, and it was wonderful.

    My uncle died sometime that night. It seems like a clumsily contrived coincidence, but that’s what happened.

  8. HelenaG says:

    I just read your review and was shocked to learn that this is a common experience. And then reading the comments from your other readers — wow! I feel the need the share my experience too.

    About 15 years ago, when my husband and I were first married, I came down with a mono-like virus which knocked me out for about two months. I could not go to work during that period of time because all I wanted to do was sleep. I would sleep everywhere — on the couch, on the floor in the sunshine in front of the sliding doors, sometimes I would just drop to the floor in whatever room I happened to be in, but whenever I slept in our bed upstairs (flat on my back — there’s a connection with one of your readers), I inevitably was visited at some point by a black, evil, shadowy presence which would sit on my chest. I felt, very palpably, that this thing was evil and wished to harm me. There was also a sexual component to it, but really weird, like a dream of being raped by a shadow?!! Very hard to describe the sensation. I could not move, but felt that I was awake and knew exactly where I was, in my bed upstairs. I would just would lie there waiting, terrified, my heart beating a million times a minute, until the dark shape sort of melted away and I was able to move again.

    When I mentioned it to my husband, he dismissed it as me being in a liminal state between waking and dreaming, but I thought it was strange that it happened so regularly and only when I was alone in the daytime. The experience never occurred at night (thankfully) but I thought that this thing was deliberately targeting me when it knew I was alone.

    One time, I became tired of feeling afraid and vicitmized, so while I was lying there, waiting for the experience to pass, I struggled to make light of the experience by smiling. I finally was able to manage a smile and at that point, I felt a sudden change in the thing. It was enraged. I felt completely consumed by this external rage and hatred, and before, while I was having difficulty breathing, I now struggled for every breath. It was as if the most massive weight had suddenly increased itself on my entire body, 10-fold. This ended at some point. I was utterly terrified. I was able to move and sit up again and the entire room was spinning.

    Never again did I sleep in that bed by myself during the day. We moved out shortly after, and I always attributed that experience to some sort of supernatural haunting or a weird dreamlike state. To know now that others have experienced the same thing is just flabbergasting. Perhaps my experience had something to do with my illness. The feeling of pure evil though was completely chilling. I will definitely look for that film.

  9. Jen W. says:

    I’ve had the same recurring dream for years, probably almost 20? The weirdest thing to me is that I *know* I’m dreaming and I still can’t do anything about it. Mine aren’t nearly as scary, vision-wise, and specific as what’s mentioned in the documentary, but it’s a feeling of someone on top of me, about to hurt me. I can FEEL them laying on top of me (like others, this only happens when I’m sleeping on my back) and breathing on my neck. I try to scream but no sound comes out. Occasionally I’ll get a little moan out and I can hear it. I try to move my arms to wake up my husband but I can’t move. I have to keep repeating to myself, “This is a dream. Wake up. Wake up.” Until finally I can snap out of it and realize there really isn’t anyone there. Luckily it doesn’t happen very often but god, it’s terrifying every time it does.

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