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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
Honestly, unless you are a die-hard completist of vintage cinema, probably not. You’ll likely hate it if you need a story that actually makes sense or characters that behave like human beings. If you’re the kind of person who likes finding weird, forgotten scraps of film history, though, you might get a kick out of how messy it is.
There is this moment about halfway through where the lead actor just stands in a room staring at a wall for what feels like three full minutes. It isn't a dramatic choice. It’s just... silence. I checked my phone twice to see if the stream had frozen. It hadn't.
The pacing is entirely nonexistent. One scene will be screaming at you with high drama, and the next will be a lingering shot of a desk or an empty doorway that adds absolutely nothing to the plot. It reminded me a bit of the chaotic editing in The Sunrise Trail, but with even less urgency.
The lighting is another thing entirely. Characters are constantly backlit to the point where they turn into shadowy blobs. I found myself squinting just to figure out who was talking. It’s not moody. It’s just dark.
It’s funny, because you see flashes of something decent. There’s a specific camera angle in the garden sequence that feels like it belongs in a much better movie. Then, boom, we’re back to a scene that feels as clunky as Der siebente Tag. It’s a rollercoaster of 'wait, that was cool' followed by 'why are we still looking at this rug?'
If you've seen enough of these, you know the type. It takes itself so seriously that you end up laughing at the tragedy. Terrible pesadilla definitely earns its title, though maybe not in the way the director intended. I don't know, maybe I just needed more coffee.