Before unveiling the
opening title cards, a series of inter-titles warn the viewer of stroboscopic
effects potentially causing seizures in some viewers appears before then
suggesting that the film be played loud.
Starting out by ripping off of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void with its epileptic foreshadowing before closing on
copying Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer,
the cinematic debut of visual artist AKIZ (Achim Bornhak) and reportedly the
first entry in a planned Demonic Trilogy
is among the most shameless E.T. knockoffs
to surface since Mac and Me. It is also arguably the most aggravating
look-at-me demonstration of “experimental visual technique” since Jonas
Ackerlund’s misbegotten Spun.
While many are quick
to read Der Nachtmahr (The Nightmare) as a teenage coming
of age science fiction horror psychodrama about a young girl who after a hallucinogen
filled rave party starts to see a Gollum like creature monkeying about her home,
I saw a wannabe eager to display the influences hanging far from it’s sleeves. When it isn’t blatantly stealing high
watermarks from Spielberg’s 1982 classic, right down to the girl and creature
feeling each other’s feelings with the Gollum being poked and prodded in
plastic wrapped hospital rooms, it gives neither the poor girl nor her special
friend much of anything to do but muck about in back alleyways or raiding the
fridge leaving a mess echoing (again Spielberg’s) Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Der Nachtmahr received special attention for being made in
Germany without the support of public broadcasting or film financing groups as
well as going the Dogme 95 route of using natural lighting and set pieces
without much additional dressing. Fine
and dandy, but the results here when they don’t look like a YouTube video with
many blocky looking nighttime scenes like Ackerlund’s aforementioned misfire
don’t have anything substantive to say about the experimental techniques being
used other than ‘aren’t they cool?’. Der Nachtmahr also arrives on the heels
of the equally troubling yet comparatively infinitely better coming of age teen
shock-horror fest Wetlands, a film I
don’t necessarily recommend either but will take over the prospect of Der Nachtmahr a second time.
Every now and again a
unique cinematic diamond-in-the-rough appears out of nowhere that can’t help
but draw out my insect-like cinephile antennae searching for something truly
unique. From the outset, Der Nachtmahr appeared to be this
experimental and surrealist cinema junkie’s cup of tea. Upon actually sitting through it, I watched
so much promise for offbeat provocation, technical innovation and sensory
assault get all but completely squandered.
It isn’t so much that it nakedly rips off all of the right people, which
it does seemingly with relish in scene after scene. My problem with Der Nachtmahr is that once all the pieces taken from various
sources are all in place, the film ultimately does absolutely nothing new with
them.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki