If there’s one thing you’re supposed to get out of a documentary, it’s at the very least some sort of new knowledge gained about the subject in question. It’s essentially the most basic thing that a documentary needs to accomplish in order to be even remotely successful, and from the relatively few documentaries I’ve seen, they’ve all at least done that much. That is, until I came across 2015’s The Nightmare, a documentary that tells a few good stories, but literally fails at doing the most basic thing a documentary needs to do.
The subject of this documentary is sleep paralysis. What is sleep paralysis, you may ask? It’s essentially a feeling that occurs either just as you’re falling asleep or as you’re beginning to wake up when your mind is active and aware, but the rest of your body can’t move at all. You can’t talk and in some more extreme cases, you can’t breathe. In some episodes, one can hallucinate a figure - whether it be a person or a shadowy figure - entering your room, getting ready to attack you. You have to harness as much energy as you can to move your body and break yourself out of the episode, so you can wake up. It really only lasts for about a minute or so, but it feels like an eternity. In order to prevent episodes of sleep paralysis, all you need to do is have a fairly normal sleep schedule, make sure you’re not depriving yourself of sleep, and attempt to go to bed with as little stress as possible, no matter how bad your day is. Sleep paralysis an absolutely frightening feeling, and I know that because I speak from experience.
Did you enjoy that little synopsis of sleep paralysis? I hope you did, because I essentially just educated you more on the topic than this documentary did. That’s correct: This documentary fails to address what sleep paralysis actually is. It never actually gives a concrete definition of the subject, talks about ways in which to prevent it, how often it may occur, who may get it. Nothing. It’s essentially eight stories by eight different people recounting their various experiences with sleep paralysis. It never once addresses the topic by its actual name, and instead gives a definition of the word “nightmare,” before diving right into the stories themselves.
And it’s a shame, because the stories themselves aren’t bad at all. And what the documentary does is fairly intriguing. As someone tells their story, the experience gets recreated using professional actors, with representations of things such as the imaginary shadowy figure about to attack. At the very least, I can attest to the fact that these descriptions are extremely accurate, and can sometimes be entertaining to watch. There are moments in which a subject describes their experience and I can feel the chills going down my spine, at the mere thought of losing all feeling in my body and feeling helpless in bed as some imaginary figure that I know isn’t really there getting ready to attack.
The problem is, if you don’t know anything about the subject, it can be a bit hard to relate to any of these people. If you just turned on Netflix, and started playing this documentary with no prior knowledge of sleep paralysis, you’ll have almost no idea why they’re going through what they’re going through, nor will you feel you gained any knowledge about the subject by the end of it. All you’ll have gotten out of it were eight scary stories told by eight people who are clearly emotionally shaken by their reoccurring experiences. The film presents itself as a “horror-documentary.” It delivers on the horror aspect, but unfortunately fails on the documentary level as you really don’t get anything out of it.
Additionally, while the stories are intriguing, the film begins to feel a bit repetitive after a while. The narratives are fairly lengthy at times, even when they are broken up and we go back and forth among all eight subjects. After about twenty minutes in, we already get the idea loud and clear, and want a little more than just hearing eight scary stories that are really kind of the same thing repeated over and over again. We’re waiting for that moment in which we get that explanation as to why these people experience these sort of nightmares, yet that moment never comes.
This documentary manages a feat that I never thought was possible to happen in a documentary: Not once, is an expert on the subject interviewed for this. No medical doctors, no psychologists, no men or women of science. No one. All documentaries include at least one professional who has some sort of expertise on the topic, but this fails to even give us just one of said professionals. Now, it’s to my understanding that the director, Rodney Ascher, experienced sleep paralysis himself in the past, and it seems he wanted to go for a more personal feel for this documentary, interviewing only those who actually experienced sleep paralysis themselves.
While I sympathize with Mr. Ascher as well as his subjects, even the most personal of works don’t shut out all those who have no other knowledge on the topic and make it only accessible for those who can relate. For example, Alfonso Cuaron just released Roma on Netflix last year, which was a heavily autobiographical tale about his own experiences growing up, telling his most personal story to date. Despite heavily drawing from real life, Cuaron did not make the film in a way that only those who were there with him growing up be able to relate to the film. He still made it accessible for others to watch, and did not include inside jokes or vague descriptions that “only those who were there will get” because that’s just silly and isolating a massive amount of people. And unfortunately, that’s what I feel happened in The Nightmare.
If all you’re in the mood for is hearing a few scary stories about some nightmares that eight unfortunate souls experienced, then go check out The Nightmare, because at the very least, it succeeds on that level. If you want some actual knowledge on the subject of sleep paralysis and gain some sort of insight as to why it occurs and some ways to prevent it, do yourself a favor and just go to Wikipedia to read up on it. Because unfortunately, you’ll get much more out of a brief article than you will this documentary.
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