It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Mainly I was intrigued by this film because dreams and sleep have always fascinated me, particularly sleep paralysis. I found it to be such a strange and frightening phenomenon, and wanted to learn more about it. As a documentary, this film fails. No science behind anything to do with sleep paralysis is explained, the entire film is individuals recounting their experiences. Most of the film is reenactments during interviews with these people, and the reenactments are really the point of the movie. And many of these reenactments are pretty good, even though the budget was as low as $28,000. With what they had to work with, they put great effort into it and it turned out well. It definitely has passion behind it, and I think that its director (Rodney Ascher) has potential as a good filmmaker. But back to the reattachment scenes, I really think the purpose of the movie was to give viewers a taste of the experience of sleep paralysis. There are copious amounts of pov shots in beds while shadowy figures approach, usually these shots are then switched to the person having the experience, and then switched back. This is played over haunting music and the person being interviewed. Its similar to some of those bad ghost shows on the discovery channel in the way its formatted, though the stories recounted here I am sure are real, sleep paralysis is a real thing, ghosts I'm unsure of. I suppose that's what works about this movie, is it instills the fear of experiencing sleep paralysis in its viewers. Also some of the ways it maneuvered around the low budget was charming. But is it an informative documentary? Not at all. As a decent horror film, however, it succeeds.

As someone who has read about and been simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the idea of sleep paralysis, this was both a fun and deeply disturbing watch. Director Rodney Ascher — in his second documentary following Room 237, an exploration of The Shining — interviewed 8 people who all had some level of experience with sleep paralysis. The documentary alternates between the very stripped down and honest interviews themselves — they very intentionally used off-kilter camera angles, played with shadows, and took advantage of techniques like filming a person from the next room over to really add to the sense of isolation — and some of the peoples' stories or specific memories acted out by professional actors and with special effects.I thought it was a really cool blend of traditional documentary and horror movie. They opted not to include any input from doctors or psychologists on the matter, which I thought actually added to the film more than anything a sense of compassion, of mutual understanding, of just stark storytelling and brilliantly done segments of recreating their visions. There's no one there offering their ideas of why it happens, their research, their debunking, their charts or graphs… it's just the people, alone, recounting their memories and their fear."All the darkness looks alive."The thing that struck me the most was how similar everyone's stories were. Sleep paralysis is not just the loss of your ability to move or speak — which would be awful enough on its own — but it is often accompanied by hallucinations, or "visitations". The fact that these people all described very similar details — all of them have regular encounters with these "Shadow People", and several specifically mentioned a man in a hat, a seeming leader of the group — makes you feel as though there's something much more sinister at hand, but whether that is some kind of deep government conspiracy, alien visitations, demonic possession, or something else entirely is unclear. But the ability to speculate takes this documentary — and this topic in general — from something creepy to downright horrifying.Honestly, I'd highly recommend this both to anyone interested in the topic of sleep paralysis and someone interested in a decent horror film. It provides enough scares and haunting imagery — in particular they did an amazing job at making the shadow people look even darker than a regular shadow, which one interviewee mentioned — to stand alone as a horror film, which makes me super curious to see Rodney Ascher try his hand at something besides documentaries (though I will happily keep watching those as long as he puts them out, too!).

There's nothing informative or scientific in this so called "documentary". To sum up, there are demons out there trying to suck the soul out of you and the only way out is to turn to Jesus. Oh, yeah and it appears to be transmitting as an STD, pretty contagious, so beware! It's fake, scripted and they could have at least try and find more believable actors.Nothing more than Christian propaganda trying to attract more followers through spreading fear and disinformation due to it's declining influence in the recent years. If you are looking for reasonable explanations and real stories, do not waste your time.This is just laughable.Not to mention how insulting it is to medical profession and science in general.I wish i could have rated it with - 10.

It's a documentary, yes, but it seems like its main goal is to be entertaining, not inform the audience about the science behind sleep paralysis (what little information there is out there, at least). While that's completely fine, I do think they should have at least had a mental health professional or sleep expert (or whatever they're called) weigh in at times. Once again, that's fine that they kept the focus on the experiences of the subjects, but I do think that in the avoidance of including a professional and researched opinion, it does feel like they're giving some undue credibility to the "it could be paranormal" argument. They do interview some people who believe and explain the more rational side of things, but it still would have been nice to hear from a professional.I've had sleep paralysis a handful of times in my life, and once in particular it was absolutely terrifying and it did seem like there was something in the room with me. It actually took a few weeks for me to get over it, but it would have taken much longer to get over if I actually thought for a second that the experience was "real" in any way and not just an elaborate creation of my own mind. That's not to say that I think the documentary is in any way dangerous to those who are looking for an explanation, but I do think people should go in more expecting a horror movie, and less expecting an informative documentary. That being said, it is entertaining to hear all of these pretty terrifying stories acted out on screen. If that's your thing, you should give it a watch.