Der Nachtmahr

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.

What is this film? Part horror, part mystery, part coming of age, think "David Lynch makes an ET-reboot targeted at high schoolers". This wide spectrum of genres gives the film a nice flow, because it allows the director to mold the story in any way that he pleases. The viewer is kept on the edge of the seat, while the story is taking turn after turn.

Still, a little more focus would have been beneficial. Take, for example, the bold claim I found on the back of the DVD: "The ultimate Berlin-movie of this generation". Whoever sits down to watch "Der Nachtmahr" with this expectation is bound to be disappointed. To be fair, it features some very impressive scenes of raves and clubs but this is simply a back drop, to draw this to the foreground is merely a marketing move. Same goes for the mystery elements. There is enough material to break the wall between reality and fiction but if you are looking for dark, mind-bending mystery, there is other places to look.

I, as a viewer, brushed aside the mystery, the raving, the strobe effects and under all the rubble, found the beautiful story of Tina and "her" nightmare. Whatever it is, she is bound to it; the more people are trying to drive it out, the stronger their bond becomes; until it becomes clear that, while ugly and inapt for posh Berlin suburbia, it is a peaceful companion that Tina learnes to love and live with.

Surrounded by people pushing her around for the sake of "mental health" and fitting into suburbian society, a teenager emancipates into a young adult with a healthy attitude towards the darker sides of life... This might not be a good promotional slogan but viewing "Der Nachtmahr", this is what I will remember.

THE NIGHTMARE is a hell of a trip. It's a creature feature based on the painting of the same name by the Swiss painter Henry Fuseli. This film is a nightmarish tale of a slow psychological disintegration of a teen who mysteriously gets attached to an ape-like creature after an inexplicable incident at a party. The film is a slow burn and is visually gorgeous. The strobing lights, disorienting camera angles, and pulsating beats, all create a mystifying and moody atmosphere. The bulk of the film is pretty straightforward, but it takes a hard left turn in its third act and enters into the surrealist realm and the ending is fairly ambiguous. It is a very solid and less-talked-about surrealist psychological horror cum creature feature with great production values and good acting about identity and individuality. Not to be missed!

Akiz's (Achim Bornhak) monster movie from 2015 (the director prefers to be called that way rather than the horror genre). It was screened in if Istanbul the same year.

The creature resembling ET is actually a mix of a very old man and a newborn baby. The demon Tina confronts when she realizes there's no escape from it. They share fears and pains. The goal in common is to try to make room for themselves in society. This part actually constitutes the psychological dimension of the movie. There is also the theme of reality, which is the weak point of the film. The creature is presented as a phantasmagorical character in the first part of the movie, and the title of the movie (Nachtmahr: nightmare in German) proves this. But there is no time/event plot that supports its visibility later on, everything is left unsupported.

The acting and gestures of the parents do not seem to be good either. The girl seems to suffer more from her parents' disbelief in fact, rather than the creature itself.

Against the indispensable backdrop of techno-psychedelic throbbing drug-infused party experiences, a teenage girl starts seeing a hyperstitional monster resembling a living-corpse embryo in her house, which wants to idle around, consume food and come closer to the girl. Alongside classical dynamism of sanity vs. craziness, there's an unique kind of isomorphism going on between the girl and monster — Tina is the monster and grows an attachment to it (when it's hurt, she feels the repercussions on her flesh and mind) — uncovering themes of self-image, uncertainty of pregnancy and relation to friends (especially the guy she has a crush on), making this a more intelligible coming-of-age film (she becomes 18). However the film is edited in a way to seem free and incomprehensible, in the sense that planes of reality, dream and perception are merged, such that for example scenes later in the film seem to occur as if those before didn't happen, vice versa, and so on. The hand-held camera always sweeps to make the viewer feel as a fellow party-goer or a ghost gliding next to the characters. The beginning already introduces a lot of ambiguity with its portrayal of a non-linear time disturbance that's very much related to plausible anxious visions happening on a reckless passionate party night, with its libidinal and death instincts, distinctive visceral flowing trajectories and trips, that fervently coalesce in this psychological rave film.