Nightmare (2023) Thinly spread Horror that tries to wear too many hats (Review)

“To sleep, perchance to dream” said Hamlet, who was actually contemplating death rather than just forty winks when he uttered those famous words, but what happens when dreaming becomes invasive, violent and deadly? That’s the premise of ‘Nightmare’ – Norway’s answer to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, complete with its very own baby-crazy demonic Freddie Kruger who terrorises women through their dreams.

Young couple Mona and Robby are excited to buy their first flat – a spacious but shabby apartment in a high-rise inner city block. With Robby’s work picking up, Mona throws herself into decorating and refubishing, but while ripping off wallpaper she finds evidence about a previous resident’s macabre history – a woman who murdered her baby and herself. The neighbours are moody and suspicious, the couple downstairs constantly argue while their baby screams almost non-stop, and this cacophony infiltrates the flat causing Mona to struggle with her sleep in these new surroundings. Robby’s job keeps him at the office late into the night, and an increasingly isolated Mona starts nodding off during the day as increasingly visceral dreams impact her waking life.

Upon finding herself pregnant from an encounter with Robby in her dreams, Mona starts to question their disturbing nature and their source, becoming convinced the cause is the mythical ‘Mare’ – a demon set on impregnating women and possessing their unborn children. As Mona becomes increasingly unhinged and her mental state deteriorates, Robby and her friends grow more concerned that she is a danger to herself and others. Is her fate sealed like the woman who lived in the flat before her, or can she break free of the Mare and its hold on her dreams and her body before it’s too late?

Written and directed by Kjersti Helen Rasmussen, the film’s setting, lighting and sound design is on point. Mona and Robby’s flat is dark, dank and overwhelming, with windows that offer barely any natural light and a constant buzzing noise had me batting away imaginary flies and checking my nearby electrical appliances. Its depressing atmosphere could be down to Norway’s lack of sunlight in winter months, which is potentially a reason for the oppressive air hanging over the whole film. Robby (Herman Tømmeraas), and Mona (Elie Harboe), are believable as a young couple in love, and if I had to pick a gripe it would be that Robby’s demanding working hours seem dated given 2023’s post-pandemic hybrid working models.

Along the same lines, his keenness to have a baby with Mona seems to reflect traditional values that sit a little strangely nowadays, but it’s countered by Mona’s uncertainty that she want’s children, which becomes the basis for their arguments. Much of the heavy lifting here is done by Mona who, alone in the flat, interacts with the sinister downstairs neighbours while researching her condition, and Harboe is believable as someone who just needs a solid eight hours sleep, and who is becoming unable to tell the difference between her sleeping and waking life. Unfortunately it’s in this inability to establish reality that the film starts showing a few cracks that later become gulfs.

Mona’s waking dreams come without warning, which can lead the audience to struggle with what’s supposed to be real and what’s not, and while this can be effective by putting us in her shoes, it did make me question if anything I was watching was real. This really muddied the waters for me – especially in the last act of the film as we’re asked to take a few leaps that are supposedly in the waking world, but which would have been more at home in a dream. There’s a big dollop of demon lore that drops late in the film and only confuses the plot further, and the attempted marriage of advanced sleep science and demonology never really comes together for an effective finale.

It’s disappointing but inevitable for a film that can’t decide if it’s a haunted house horror, pregnancy horror, or a descent into madness horror – with all the well-trodden hallmarks of the various genres on show. Ultimately the film’s conclusion isn’t as satisfactory as I would have liked, although some will be intrigued by the seeming resistance to provide a story that concludes definitively.

Nightmare could have benefitted from choosing a focus and leaning into it – especially as the writer/director is obviously comfortable and capable of ticking all the boxes for an effective genre film. That would have also allowed an increase in jump scares, gore or whatever they so choose, but that’s not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and fans of more ambiguous endings might warm to the conclusion. It’s not enough as a stand-alone for a movie night, but if you watch it in a double bill with ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ then you can marvel at how men’s paternal instincts have barely changed in over 50 years.

David’s Archive: Nightmare (2022)