Nightmare (2005)

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Whatever the artistic qualities of this film, I have to say that it has (at least) one redeeming point: it is a very interesting watch. One can only wander, what it would look like, had the director secured a hollywoodian budget for this project where poverty is occasionally visible, even though well masked. It is quite lynchian and just like with most every Lynch film, you find yourself enjoying the going-ons immensely, yet at the same time being deeply afraid that the ending will fail to produce a satisfactory solution. In this case, the film doesn't just end in coitus interruptus (a technique that makes Lynch very irritating) but does offer an 'instant satisfaction', that unrolls during the last 1 minute or so. Yet, as with all things instant, after the first rapture has evaporated, the whole thing seems somewhat silly and artificial. Nevertheless, the film captivated me, kept me guessing and was a very good way to spend 1,5 hours.

First of all, a quick message to the crew of the movie. When you go onto a site like IMDb, where people can click on the user-name you made up in two seconds by mashing on the keyboard to make up good reviews for your own movie, it is a good idea to maybe review some other titles first? Just so you don't, you know, look like you are shamelessly self-promoting. Because that makes you look like a scab.Anyway, I digress.Our hero of the story, a film student who is celebrating his latest well-received project, goes to a party and meets a girl. Within about an hour of meeting the girl, the two bump ugly for most of the night. Waking up the next morning, they find a mysterious camcorder. And on the camcorder is what appears to be the two of them committing a murder. Rather than do the logical thing and either turn it in to the police or destroy it, our hero decides to use not just the concept, but the camera its self for his latest script.Now. This is the best way I can describe the movie: naked. This movie is very naked. Softcore porn naked. In fact, this movie could pretty much be described as such with a violent bent. Nearly every character in the movie struts about naked, with most of the primaries including the two protagonists strutting about in their birthday suits for at least a quarter of the movie, in many scenes to where it becomes farcical. In one instance, the main character goes out into a hallway and strikes up a conversation with another character in the buff for no apparent reason.But then again, a lot of things in this movie seem to happen for no apparent reason. Once you get past the point where they discover the camera and tape, the film begins to get shaky. And by the middle of the film, the plot completely derails. Where the main characters are and what their motivations are become fuzzier and fuzzier. And that is if they make it to the end of the movie without completely vanishing. Character development, save their development towards an inevitable nude scene is practically non-existent. And where it does exist, it goes off into irrelevant tangents and confused "twists". Ultimately, little if anything gets resolved. Even the initial plot starter--the mysterious tape--is never explained or largely even touched upon.Another core aspect of the movie is the violence. Just as prevalent as the nudity and often accompanying it are violent scenes that are literally senseless. This is not at all enhanced by poor effects that often seem better suited for some D-grade slasher or monster movie. It contributes nothing to the plot and is clearly made only to shock and disturb.Nightmare is, in summation a pretentious and cheap shlock film. It almost seems as if it were written and directed by a pubescent pre-teen, claiming some shaky premise of artistic merit and using his time behind the camera to get as much fake blood and as many people naked on-screen as possible. If you want to watch a movie in the style this attempts, go watch Jacobs Ladder. It is in far, far better taste.

I rented this film because the blurb said it was a 'thinking man's horror film.' It is neither, definitely no thinking was involved in making this piece of drek, and it's certainly not a horror film. I am writing this to warn any possible renters away from this awful excuse for a film project. I can only believe that the positive reviews here are from people who helped make it. I checked the spoiler alert but there's nothing to spoil: the movie doesn't make any sense. It is stupid in the extreme. The only spoiler I can think of: don't see this movie, it will ruin your day! Okay. A guy and a girl wake up in a room with a video camera parked at the foot of their bed which wasn't there the night before. They play the video in the camera and it looks like something shot by a chimpanzee--you see flashes of naked bodies and fake blood but it's all too jerky and blurry to make out anything. Maybe you can see flashes of faces and two of them might be the very guy and girl who are viewing the tape. Though the film in the camera is blurry and jerky we are meant to see that it shows the guy and the girl killing a nude woman or two. Did the two of them murder someone during the night and they can't remember it? There are no clues in the room, no blood or weapons anywhere. The experience is strange and disturbing but they don't tell anyone about it. Now get this: the guy is a student film maker and the mysterious camera at the foot of the bed that morning inspires him to come up with a brilliant idea for his film project-- he'll make a movie about a guy who wakes up with his girlfriend from a night of sex and finds a video camera pointed at the bed and so they view the tape...and of course the film class (full of total nerds and halfwits) thinks that's a wonderful idea for a movie. So the guy goes around finding some people who are willing to pose naked in a sort of soft- core gore romp with a lot of fake blood. Lucky filmmaker, he gets to work with naked girls! The fact that none of them can act doesn't matter because nothing else matters in this sorry excuse for a story. But the actor who plays the filmmaker guy plays him as a brain-dead zombie most of the time who has no idea what to do from one moment to the next. But maybe he's not acting, maybe that's how he really is. Certainly it never occurs to him to call the police.I could go on, but you get the point. Not really a spoiler alert but a DUMB alert.

An impressive first feature with solid acting, lots of nudity, blood and gore and a plot that tumbles under and eats itself in concentric circles. (Whatever that means…). I must admit, I walked in 32 minutes late at the Boston Underground Film Festival screening and but was immediately stuck by the images and action and remained riveted right up until the ending that was handled with the right mix of ambiguity and clarity of 'clues'—to lead you to believe you understood what happened, but was not quite sure. I think that's a good quality to leave an audience with for this kind of picture. I mean, what would life be without mystery?I particularly liked the bald creepy crew member who, in one shot, looks exactly like Robert Blake in Lost Highway—a film that was definitely an inspiration for this one. The high def video looks great—just like film--and it's quite a professional piece of work. Plus, this film had the most gorgeous shot of all the films I saw at this years BUFF, but I'm not going to tell you which one.