Expected more

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

After finding The Age of Shadows to be an excellent choice,I took a look at the list of other titles set for the main part of the ICM Film Fest. Expecting all the Horror flicks to be limited to the "Horror section" of the fest,I was intrigued to spot a German Horror in the main line-up,which led to me getting set for a restless nights sleep.The plot:Returning from a rave with mates,Tina begins hearing strange sounds. Along with the noises, Tina starts to see a strange creature appear in all her dreams/nightmares. Telling mum and dad,Tina's family begin treating her for mental illness. As she loses all support and begins to experience a mental breakdown, the creature breaks out of Tina's dreams,and turns her reality into a nightmare.View on the film:Sculpting the movie over 13 years,writer/director/co-editor Akiz awakens Tina's nightmare with the abrasive use of strobe lighting and Rave music that stylishly crosses the line between Tina's dreams and reality. Filmed completely with natural light,Akiz gives the monster (who comes to life with terrific SFX) an impressive level of flexibility, with close-ups of the creatures face bringing out a warmth kept under wraps in the eerie wide-shots. Shaving into Tina's fragile mental state, Akiz explores her breakdown with darting tracking shots that enter the black hole of depression Tina is trapped in,with no sign of any family or friends putting their hands out to help. Joined by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon giving a good performance as Lehrerin, Carolyn Genzkow gives a terrific performance as Tina,with Genzkow appearing really at ease and natural when working with the creature SFX,and also getting under the fractured skin of Tina,whose partying outlook Genzkow peels away,as the nightmare destroys Tina's life. Blending dark horror fantasy with raw psychological drama,the screenplay by Akiz makes the genres feel ill at ease sitting next to each other. Leaving no room for ambiguity over the existence of the creature, Akiz gets Tina to take sudden leaps in logic,from her never attempting to capture the creature on camera, (despite playing with her mobile whilst around it a number of times) to leaving her room to call her parents to see the creature,instead of just calling them whilst in the room itself,where Tina's nightmare begins.

"The Nightmare" is the kind of movie that isn't as interesting to watch as it is to read or think about. I believe the direction is what undercuts it; moments don't have the impact they should have. Scenes could have been shot and handled better, but with the wobbly camera, the director himself feels like just another stoned bystander among the movie's teenage ravers.The story is about a party girl who is apparently hit by a car. She survives with no visible injury, but begins to have visions of a creature that looks like a cross between Gollum from "Lord of the Rings" and Dobby the House Elf.The people around her believe that she is going crazy, and perhaps she is.There are several sequences that appear to show the movie rewinding itself, perhaps as an indication to us that the movie is not occurring on a linear timescale. It may also be telling us that the events we just witnessed are the culmination of what we are witnessing again in the rewind sequence.The problem is that the movie doesn't have a sure hand at the controls. It's too disjointed to make you really curious about what you're seeing. The concept is interesting enough, however, to recommend it to students of the weird.

"Der Nachtmahr" or "The Nightmare" is a German 90-minute movie from last year (2015). The writer and director is Achim Bornhak (as Akiz) and he is mostly known so far for his fairly weak Uschi Oermaier biopic from almost 10 years ago. His newest work we have here has nothing to do with the world of entertainment or show business, but instead it takes us into the deep and dark world of the female protagonist. She is played by Carolyn Genzkow, one of the new generation if rising German actresses. Other than her, the cast has a couple familiar names like Sina Tkotsch and Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht. And while I think Genzkow did the character justice, I still feel that the awards recognition this film has been receiving recently is way exaggerated.This is the story of a young woman whose life comes apart at the seams when a strange nightmarish (in the truest sense of the word) creature enters her life, namely the one in the film's title. What follows is a collection of scenes from her everyday life as well as scenes with said creature who looks like a(n even more) deformed version of Gollum from "Lord of the Rings". That's basically the core plot and it's a character study where you can never say for sure if the character is really there or it's just a figment of imagination in the girl's head or even if the creature symbolized something else that is wrong with the girl and her life. Decide for yourself. Or don't. For I myself would not really recommend the watch here to anybody other than the people I mentioned in the title of my review. It is not disastrous by any means, but story-wise it felt really unimpressive beyond the shock value. Same can be said about the acting: not bad, but also not good except from Ochsenknecht who is weak as always. The film's atmospheric side (always important with the genre) did not convince me either. Overall, I give this film a thumbs-down and I suggest you go for something else instead as the film dragged quite a bit and had some lengths too. It is really overrated in my opinion.

Der Nachtmahr is a unique and highly innovative genre film made in Germany. What starts out as a potential horror movie quickly turns into a very original piece of art featuring elements of different genres. It's like Donnie Darko and Black Swan were fused together to create something completely new.Tina (superbly portrayed by young German actress Carolyn Genzkow) is 17. All she is interested in are rave parties, drugs and a guy named Adam. One night she spots this strange little creature in the bushes that looks like ET's ugly brother (and ET wasn't a beauty himself). Tina seems to be the only one who is able to see that being that becomes an important part of her life...At the beginning of the film there are two warnings (which tell the audience to beware of both light and sound of the following movie) and a request that this movie should be experienced with high volume nonetheless. At that point I personally thought that these warnings were kind of empty and inserted to generate a dramatic feeling before the actual movie started…And boy, was I wrong. These dance scenes are extremely intense and unique, that's all I will tell you about that, go and experience it yourself!What stands out to me about the cinematographic approach of Der Nachtmahr is this melange of the typical German movie style which features extreme pragmatic and realistic dialogues and characters (90 % of German movies are made that way and most of them suck in my opinion) and these fantasy scenes where the Nachtmahr appears and disappears miraculously. These kind of opposite movie styles fuse throughout the film and there are several scenes where you start wondering what is going on, is it reality or some kind of dream sequence? It's not just that this film doesn't give clear answers to the questions you might have, it constantly tries to lure you in wrong directions…Der Nachtmahr is a splendid film with unique style and an extraordinary approach. You cannot watch it, you have to experience it.