Night Terror(VOD) — Night Terror
Night Terror doesn’t waste time making us think the horror might all be in the characters’ heads or, for that matter, their dreams.
Given the dripping Florida atmosphere and the amount of time Night Terror spends in the dream world, it’s wise to remove any ambiguity straightaway. Mr. Sandman’s familiar moniker and his place in a long line of cinematic entities that prey on mortals when they are most vulnerable demand a clearly marked-out threat. An opening scene where he turns a dream into a nightmare while taking a victim’s eyes does the job.
That victim is May Roberts (S. Epatha Merkerson), blinded as a teenager, who now takes in orphan Anna, the New York-raised granddaughter she’s never met. We follow Anna (the highly watchable Whitney Peak) as she discovers there’s more to worry about than heatstroke in Florida, including the dysfunctional relationship between her grandmother and great aunt (Golda Rosheuvel), and two local teens she befriends who seem intent on pushing boundaries.
When one of the teens torments and injures local kid Conner, Anna’s is one of three names the victim carves into a mysterious tree, triggering the Sandman’s vengeance. So it falls to Anna to find a way to stop the supernatural force invading her dreams and deciding her fate.
Colin Tilly’s directorial feature debut is simmering with promise, even if it treads well-worn paths. In the shadow of Freddy Krueger, horror’s most famous Dream Master, Night Terror crafts a monster from empathy and employs several compelling techniques to show a new type of dream world afterlife.
The sleeping sequences cross into the waking world, where oil leaks from eyes and fills hourglasses, but are more artistic than gratuitous - a nod to Tilley’s considerable experience as a music video director. When we discover the origin of this dream stalker, it’s presented in disconcerting and effective puppetry. The entity’s end form is an impressive creation: an unearthly, impassive figure that comes further into view as the film progresses, with branches for external veins and sinews.
The haunting folk quality recalls Bernard Rose’s Candyman, but Night Terror can’t quite compete on internal logic. The mythology, introduced as thunder throbs across the bayou, simultaneously feels too convoluted and underexplained. Whichever it is, it lessens the menace: this Sandman isn’t always a killer, and he’s often content taking eyes in some stylishly grotesque sequences. But the significance of the carved names or how the Sandman chooses to punish those “who do bad” feels arbitrary.
In all, it’s great in set-up, and it's creepy in execution. But the folk horror would have benefited from a bit more between.
Perhaps the most intriguing parts are the Old Testament references that run through Night Terror. It’s there in the dialogue (and the film’s alternative title), “eye for an eye.” It’s also hard not to see Cain and Abel in the fate of Anna’s grandmother and great aunt, two sisters locked in a life of envy and hatred. It could be this domestic horror that stays with its audience the longest.