This conspicuously low budget, refreshingly high concept existential thriller mixes, Philip K. Dickian tropes with an oppressive Ballardian atmosphere to entirely questionable results! A manifestly odd, and frustratingly oblique feature, Donald Jones's idiosyncratic Sci-thriller's persistent eccentricity finally won me over! While poorly acted, clotted with narrative inconsistencies, 'Perfect Nightmare' nonetheless proves itself to be an intermittently watchable, altered states/Twilight Zoned brain-tripper. While the effects and filmmaking are rudimentary, watching these two stolid male archetypes being sinisterly stalked in an increasingly unfamiliar environment by some omnipresent alien force has a genuinely nightmarish quality!
The conceit of a random individual being arbitrarily persecuted by his own unfiltered neurotic impulses, and the victim's distress vastly exaggerated by some malign militarist computer program is a decidedly unsettling one! While 'Perfect Nightmare' has no clear conclusion, and the closer you scrutinize the episodic narrative, the more asinine it all seems, and yet, Donald Jones quirky 'Spaced Out' oddity is not without entertainment value. The more enraptured viewer may experience a few disquieting moments of palpable strangeness. To a great many others, this will be unleavened bunkum, but there was something indefinable about 'Perfect Nightmare' that fitfully captured my imagination.
