A hard to follow, dark fever dream
One thing Shudder has done really well in the past is acquire great international horror films for its English-speaking subscribers. There have been some bumps in the road as of late with their acquisitions, and it’s hard to really say where their newest film, the Norwegian-produced title, Nightmare, lands for its audience. Regardless, it’s an engaging fever dream of a movie that has you questioning reality as the film goes on.
Nightmare is about a young couple, Robbie and Mona. The pair moves into a lackluster starter apartment, and it is here that we feel the pressure of their friends. The next move for them would be settling in and starting a family. This is something that any man or woman in their late twenties gets anxious about as they feel they’re being sent out to pasture for their life now.
Mona doesn’t seem to want kids, and it’s unclear if this is due to her having zero interest in raising a child or if there was a past incident of a miscarriage.
Mona struggles with sleep paralysis and sleep walks. She has visions that seem to touch on the dark side of motherhood. But she also encounters a paralysis demon that bears a striking resemblance to her boyfriend, Robbie.
Within the first twenty minutes, you can tell this movie wants to be Rosemary’s Baby. The dreamy atmosphere of it all, the societal pressure of a woman to create life; it has to have been a film in the back of the directors minds. The movie moves like a dream, and there are moments in it that don’t make a lot of sense. Nothing feels linear, and yet there are segments of the movie that feel like you can string some of it together for a few minutes, and then it turns into a fever dream again.
And it is there that you wonder if that’s the point of Nightmare. The title alone sounds generic, like a movie that reeks of a straight-to-video bin at Walmart, but it holds true to its title. There is a lot that makes zero sense, and yet you can’t look away; you’re engaged the whole time.
Nightmare scatters itself from the intense themes of the movie being discussed in laid-back, bland dialogue between its two lead characters. A woman commits suicide in the film’s final act, but we don’t know if we actually saw this happen, as it is done in the shadows of a party amongst friends. We bounce around from these horrific visions that Mona has and then find ourselves at her sleep study appointments. It’s the only time the movie feels really grounded, and yet even by the film’s final act, we don’t know if even that is real.
Nightmare scares and confuses for 100 minutes. It’s hard to judge the acting performances because they are hard to follow under the direction of it all. But in the end, the horror of Nightmare falls flat. It’s hard to say if it wants to be an arthouse or a horror film because it’s not doing a great job fusing those genres together.
Read More: Nightmare Ending Explained
Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!
-
Verdict - 5.5/10
5.5/10