Rodney Ascher, director of Room 237 – the documentary about elaborate fan theories based around Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – is bringing a horror movie of his own to this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Ascher’s film, The Nightmare, will be another documentary, this time about people who suffer from sleep paralysis. Several images from the film have been released to give audiences a taste of Ascher’s creepy and stylish vision.
Here is a description of The Nightmare from Sundance’s official website:
In this documentary-horror film, we experience the terror that a surprisingly large number of people suffer when they find themselves trapped between the sleeping and waking worlds every night. What should be explained by science gets complicated as sufferers from random backgrounds have very similar visions. The Nightmare enhances the stories with eerie dramatizations of what (and who) the subjects see.
The images appear to be from the dramatizations, as it’s unlikely Ascher captured a scowling shadow-man on camera.
The 2015 Sundance Film Festival will run from January 22nd to February 1st. The Nightmare is set to premiere January 26th. Room 237 also premiered at Sundance (in 2012) to much critical praise. We’ll see if Ascher can earn some festival love a second time around. For a look at the director’s latest work, check out segment “Q” of The ABCs of Death 2.
You can find more about The Nightmare on it’s Facebook page.