The Nightmare

The Nightmare (2015) is a documentary horror from director Rodney Ascher that you can watch online on iFILM. Eight people share what happens when sleep paralysis hits: they cannot move, cannot speak, cannot scream — while shadowy figures crowd the foot of the bed. Ascher chose not to interview sleep researchers. He chose to recreate the visions themselves.

Each account gets staged and shot: dark rooms, crushing pressure on the chest, silhouettes with red eyes, a hunched shape at the pillow. The testimonies overlap in eerie ways — strangers on different continents describing the same figure, the same frozen terror, the same ritual of it happening again and again across years.

Ascher had already turned film theory into dread with Room 237, his deep-cut study of Kubrick's The Shining. Here he takes a documented neurological condition and makes it feel like a shared curse. The real unsettling part is not the reconstructions — it is realising your own brain manufactures the creature. Watch The Nightmare (2015) online on iFILM.