When the Internet started to rise in importance, one woman decided to see what would happen if she put "shadow man" and "nightmare" into a Search box, and suddenly she found message boards with people sharing similar stories, and also a label: "Sleep Paralysis." She felt exultant, crying to the camera, "It's a thing!" Others found similar moments of connection and recognition, sometimes from very unlikely places. People suffer in isolation, thinking they are the only ones. One guy describes two figures made up of television static leaning over his crib, grinning maniacally, reaching in for him. Many of these people have been "visited" (they describe it as such) since they were babies, and for a lot of them a sleep paralysis nightmare is their very first memory. The quotes accumulate throughout the film, bringing with them a sense of dread all their own: "I thought I was having a stroke." "I felt a presence next to me trying to take my soul out." "And that is when the Shadow Man came towards me." "If I could describe what Death would feel like - it's icy-cold, dark, evil, and it's watching me." These are not "bad dreams," they are something else entirely. They are not believed when they tell their stories. They try to draw pictures of what they saw, scribbling images out when it doesn't look right. One guy admits that one vision was so frightening that "I immediately stopped being an atheist." Some have come to the conclusion that the terror will eventually get so intense that they will die from it.
The overall effect gives the sense of a sleep disorder so overpowering that it has changed people's lives forever. With one interview subject, Ascher has placed the camera in the next room, peeking through the doorway, an abyss of blackness in between us and the subject. One guy stops telling his story and peers behind his shoulder, freaked out for a second. The people telling their stories are filmed in their own homes, but with off-kilter angles, and extremely low lighting, making their surroundings look grim and dark. Using a horror-film color palette (the shadows are " Lost Highway"-thick) and horror-film camera techniques, Ascher plunges us into the actual visions that sleep paralysis creates: the moving silhouette figures, the darkness, the static. Instead, "The Nightmare" is filled with people from different regions of the country (and the world) telling their stories, accompanied by creepy re-enactments of their sleep paralysis nightmares. There are no official talking heads from the scientific community, showing us diagrams of sleep cycles or brain waves. The theories come up, but only through the voices of those who experience the phenomenon. Ascher does not focus on the many theories as to what causes sleep paralysis (stress, interrupted REM sleep).
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