Nightmare, The Review

Ascher’s follow-up to the brilliantly bizarre Room 237 is an exploration of ‘sleep paralysis’, a condition in which sufferers are trapped between sleep and wakefulness, experiencing terrifying visual and aural hallucinations. Eight sufferers are interviewed on camera, while Ascher brings their experiences to life in a way that could conceivably induce nightmares in casual viewers — although the potency of these scenes is ultimately diminished by repetition. Equally problematic is Ascher’s determination to explore the phenomenon empirically rather than scientifically: at no point is a white-coated polysomnographist wheeled out to talk about the possible causes.