Call me country bumpkin, but I like to be able to understand the movies I watch, and Nightmare, the first cinematic venture of Dylan Bank and Morgan Pehme, just doesn’t cut it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy films that are real "thinkers," but there's a difference between having to put a little extra cerebral effort into watching a movie and thinking "WTF?" over and over. I could not wrap my head around this film. If all you're interested in is some violence and gore (naked violence and gore, in fact) and don't want to think too hard about what you're watching, you might want to pass on Nightmare.
A film student and promising young director, who remains unnamed throughout, meets and instantly connects with the sensual, passionate Natalya at a party. They go to bed together, fumbling over each other with an actually fairly realistic awkwardness that carries over into the rest of the movie's acting, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Very romantic.
Until the next morning, when they awake to a camcorder bearing a tape of them brutally murdering strangers in the nude, horrific crimes they don’t remember committing. They spend a little while trying to work things out, before he has to go to class to pitch a plot. He stammers through his idea for a Civil War epic, a challenge far too ambitious for a grad student with limited funds and experience (much like Nightmare itself), and, when his classmates and professor are unimpressed, he is hit by a stroke of genius, and describes the previous night's and that morning’s happenings.
And so begins the filming of the film within the film. Our young “hero” casts an intense and aspiring actor as himself, and, despite how completely screwed up it is, Natalya as herself. More tapes keep appearing, and he and Natalya are shocked into consciousness to find themselves in the midst of another massacre. He uses the tapes as inspiration and to keep his movie’s plot going, but before long he begins to lose it.
The film follows in suit. At times the movie gives a hint of self-awareness — the entire concept of his crew ripping apart the logic of his film; you have to wonder if the creators of Nightmare went through a similar bashing. At one point Natalya asks him, “Do you think we should turn ourselves in?”
“What would we tell them?” he responds. “We don’t even know what we’ve done.”
And neither do we. Reality and fantasy intermingle, convoluting any sense the viewer might have of what’s actually going on. Flashes of a stint in prison, fingers and hands being cut off, murder after murder, each more gruesome than the last, him flipping out on set and beating crew members, shudder in and out, creating a nauseating tunnel of incomprehension. It's impossible to tell what's actually happening and what isn't. But you stick with it, thinking all with be explained, and then the credits roll and you're left in the dust. By this point, there may be any number of things running through your head: has this all just been a wild ride through the subconscious, displaying the deepest, darkest, most f***d-up desires of our main character? Is it the jumbled, confused attempt at a psychologically challenging work of sophisticated art? Is it actually a psychologically challenging work of sophisticated art?
My vote's still out. After watching an interview with the creators (see DVD Bonus Features below), things have been cleared up. I feel vaguely validated now that I know what was supposed to be going on, but still sort of like I was cheated out of time and brain power I could have spent balancing my checkbook, or trying to learn Latin.
DVD Bonus Features
The extras are pretty basic. There's a trailer, which, in traditional fashion, makes the film seem far more appealing than it actually it is; an alternate ending, which I was very excited about, thinking it would shed some light onto what the hell the movie was actually about (it didn't); and “The Morning After” Interview with writers Bank and Pehme, which did shed the light I was hoping for.
The interview is worth it. Bank and Pehme address the response their audience might have, including my own scrunched-brow reaction, and, though maintaining that they want the film left open to interpretation, offer up their vision. If you watch Nightmare and are left as clueless as I, check out the interview. It'll at least give you their sense of the film, if you can't garner one of your own.
"Nightmare" is on sale September 29, 2009 and is rated NR. Horror, Thriller. Directed by Dylan Bank, Morgan Pehme. Written by Dylan Bank, Morgan Pehme. Starring Jason Scott Campbell, Nicole Roderick, J Bloomrosen, Jolan Boockvor.
