In 2015, the documentary The Nightmare chronicled the events that sufferers of sleep paralysis endured, projecting their terrifying visions onto the big screen. With Dead Awake, filmmaker Phillip Guzman goes the fictional route to give a much more sinister justification for why the anomaly occurs. The film will be available on VOD and in select cities May 12.
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The film’s synopsis is as follows:
“Dead Awake centers on Kate Bowman (Jocelin Donahue), a young woman who discovers an ancient evil stalking people who suffer from sleep paralysis.As Kate finds herself besieged by this terrifying entity, she teams up with a local artist (Jesse Bradford) to try and stop it. With a skeptical doctor (Lori Petty) questioning her sanity, Kate turns to an eccentric expert on sleep disorders (Jesse Borrego) who opens her mind to the horrifying truth: Kate has unwittingly opened the door for this evil to enter our world and has put the lives of her friend Linda (Brea Grant), her father (James Eckhouse), and everyone else close to her in danger.”
Jeffrey Reddick serves as one of the Executive Producers, who also created the Final Destination franchise.
Despite The Nightmare trying to explore more science-based explanations for why people suffer from the bizarre phenomenon of sleep paralysis, science is hard to keep in mind when you wake up in the middle of the night and feel like there’s something in the room with you and you’re unable to move.
The stories and legends surrounding sleep paralysis date back hundreds of years, being referred to as a “night hag” in the earliest documented accounts of the anomaly. It was said that, when someone woke up in the middle of the night and felt as though they couldn’t move, a malevolent force, or “night hag,” was immobilizing them by sitting on their chest.
The creatures were also sometimes referred to as “night mares,” which is the origin of the phrase currently used to describe bad or terrifying dreams.
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[H/T Bloody Disgusting]
