NIGHTMARE (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Nightmare, Shudder

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 28, 2023

The central question of the story of Nightmare is what's real and what isn't. There's a more important question the movie doesn't answer, though: Why does it matter?

This is yet another horror story that plays with a character's—and, hence, our—grasp on reality. More specifically, writer/director Kjersti Helem Rasmussen's gimmick is to give us a bunch of scenes that might be real life or just dreams, as a young woman named Mona (Eili Harboe) deals with the stress of moving into a new apartment with a long-term boyfriend, feeling the pressure to become a mother, and becoming increasingly convinced that a literal demon is haunting her. One doesn't need to scratch too deeply to figure out that the story is about underlying fears of adulthood, parenthood, and the significant responsibilities both of those states bring with them.

The actual result of Rasmussen's movie, though, is a combination of cheap scares and fake-outs that, because the story so firmly establishes that we can't trust anything we see or anyone we meet, are as predictable as they are frustrating. If so much of a story isn't actually happening (The abrupt and distastefully provoking ending might suggest even more of it isn't real), what purpose does it really serve?

Obviously, there are many ways around that challenge, but Rasmussen seems disinterested in any of them. Instead, the filmmaker is determined to try to scare us, but the premise is so thin, while the actual content is so silly, that there's no reason to become invested in the characters, the themes, or even the basic game of the movie.

Mona and Robby (Herman Tømmeraas) have been dating for about five years. He has a good job—although the movie itself turns the unclear nature of his profession into a joke, which only reminds us, really, how vacant these characters are in terms of development—and is ready to settle down, make this new apartment a real home, and start a family. Mona, a teacher whose service are no longer needed at the school where she had been working, isn't. She's still young, after all, and that's about it in terms of giving the character even the absence of a definition or drive.

Without any employment, Mona sets herself to the task of cleaning and renovating the apartment (The space is filled with a chilly, decrepit mood, at least). She has a couple of friends in Liv (Siri Black Ndiaye) and David (Preben Hodneland), but Mona spends her days alone and her nights sleepless in the apartment. It's getting to her—and quickly, too.

The bulk of the plot revolves around Mona's nights, as she sleepwalks through the apartment, dreams of a more confident and sexually aggressive version of Robby, and occasionally sees herself, stuck in a state of sleep paralysis, being attacked by a demonic figure. Mona has these nightmares, which we clearly know aren't real, and gets startled by something frightening or just really loud, before immediately waking up by herself or to a very concerned Robby.

This pattern repeats and repeats, as if Rasmussen is certain that the process of presenting one jump scare after another, following a lengthy sequence that's obviously not happening in reality, is going to work each and every time she attempts it. It's a self-defeating theory for, what's hopefully, self-evident reasons.

The story also brings in married neighbors Siren (Gine Therese Grønner) and Martin (Peter Førde), who are new parents to an unseen but always-crying baby who just stops crying one night. Through her dreams and a scene that's maybe set in a wakeful state, Mona learns that Siren is also having problems with sleeping and nightmares. Maybe the answer can be found by way of Aksel (Dennis Storhøi), a doctor who specializes in sleep and offers a bit of trivia in a lecture that the word "nightmare" has its origin in a demon, called a mare, that causes scary dreams. Mona becomes certain that such a demon is the cause of her own problems, and after becoming pregnant following one of those nighttime visions, she also starts to think that maybe there's a demon growing inside her.

There's almost certainly something more to all of this, although, considering how little thought has been put into the movie's attempted scare tactics, the suspicion is that Rasmussen is more or less putting the subtext right there in front of us. If that is—as it seems—the case, Nightmare is even shallower than it seems on the surface.

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