RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

krepsilent I didn't see anyone comment on the ending, other than to say it goes nowhere, and I don't really agree with that, so here's my thoughts: the protagonist (Jason Scott Campbell) gets his first clue on how to "end the movie" / "catch the killer" / "end the murders", when his teacher tells him "it's time for the protagonist to take control - everyone's been a victim so far, it's time for him to take control - and time for you to finish the movie." A further clue comes from his classmate, the guy making the other movie: "... there's no villain.. it's almost as if, the director, he's the villain, he's the one putting us through all this." That's when he gets the idea - to end it, he must take control, so he invites Natalia over, grabs a knife, sets up the camera, starts it recording and he and Natalia lay on the bed, the knife hidden beside him. Increasingly certain he's the killer and/or crazy, Natalia starts fighting him, afraid he's going to kill her (or perhaps playing along, understanding his intent).Then the "movie with a movie" starts happening, and quite simply the protagonist kills the director, or the person filming. Next the scene cuts to the class film set, and the ending of the movie and movie within movie is shown - and then Natalia and protagonist huddle while he says "it's over, it's over".Who was the director? I think that is left up to the viewer. The literal interpretation could be the person who set everything up entered the room - maybe the janitor, maybe someone else, and the protagonist killed him. Another interpretation, more magical but still inside the movie, is the camera was some kind of window to another dimension, or the mind/dreams of the director, and somehow a magical second reality was interfering, and the act of killing the "director" was a way to pick an ending and stop it. Yet another interpretation is, the whole work is not actually a horror movie but an inside comment on film making of horror movies, and the comment is, in movies such as this, or Blair-witch, etc, the villain is simply the director.Personally, I think in some cases this type of ending can be brilliant, but in this case we weren't quite there (thus a 6). The viewer wonders, was this an intentional plan of a writer with a message? Or is this just a cowardly way to end a movie from a writer who was unwilling to write an actual ending, or couldn't make up his mind, or ran out of money? And I think that is what bothers so many viewers about endings like this.

Paul Andrews Nightmare is set in New York where film student director (Jason Scott Campbell) has just turned in a terrific film for his course, at a party he meets a girl named Natalia & they head upstairs to the bedroom to have sex. The next morning & they both wake up next to each other & notice a camcorder at the bottom of the bed pointed straight at them, intrigued they look at whats on the tape inside the camera & are shocked to see themselves brutally kill three women in that room but neither remember doing it & the room is spotless with no blood anywhere. That morning in film class the student has to pitch an idea for a new project & decides to use the scenario he finds himself in, as the events surrounding the tape comes to light he films them as uses his real life situation as a script for his film...Co-written & directed by first time filmmaker Dylan Blank I will not beat around the bush here & say quite simply that I hated Nightmare, I hated just about everything about it. Currently on the IMDb 'User Comments' section for Nightmare there are 6 comments (this will obviously increase over time...) & four of them give Nightmare 8 stars out of 10, one gives it 9 out of 10 while the only reviewer who has more than one comment (a respected reviewer of horror films in general on the IMDb) gave it a lowly 4, I wouldn't mind putting money on the fact all those comments praising this piece of crap came from people involved in the making of it, why only one comment apiece? I simply can't believe some of the comments here that I read, I think I watched a completely different film. For start those same said comments suggest that Nightmare is surreal, I'm sorry but I just call it an absolutely mess of a film that makes zero sense, no actually it makes less than zero sense & it's incredibly annoying, irritating & frustrating to endure. I don't really know where to begin with Nightmare & about the things which just make no sense of which there are plenty & are seemingly there for random reasons, there's something about tapes which is never resolved, there's apparently a killer going around which is never resolved, there's some out of nowhere scene featuring this guy (we never even find out his name) in a prison cell & then being interrogated & the whole making of a film within a film is just poorly done. The film has no story, it has no conclusion or resolution, the character's are awful & have no background or depth, it makes no sense & it's an incredibly painful experience to sit though in one go. Did the makers even have a script? It feels like sometimes they are just making it up as they go along. The more I think about Nightmare the more I hate it. What's the point of coming up with a potentially interesting story about mysterious tapes which seem to show people killing other people even though they don't remember doing it & then not even bother resolving it or going anywhere with it?Besides a terrible script that makes no sense, has no story & is just generally all round rubbish I also hated the way it was put together. The whole film being made within a film is just so irritating it's untrue, particularly towards the end your never sure what is is part of the actual film or what is being filmed & frustratingly it's never resolved or explained. There are often long stretches you can't understand what the hell is going on, the end filmed with a camcorder in particular is one of the worst filmed sequences in a professional film I have ever seen, it's literally impossible to figure out whats happening. It's all meant to be surrealistic, trippy & abstract but as I said for me Nightmare just came across as a huge mess from start to finish. At times it felt like Nightmare was randomly edited together by a chimpanzee with a pair of scissors & a roll of sticky-tape. Looking like it was shot in the director's apartment on a camcorder it's quite hard to even categorise this, I certainly wouldn't call it a horror film that's for sure. There's little in the way of gore, there's a bit of fake blood splashed around & a severed hand but nothing else. It doesn't even feel like a horror film, there's nothing scary or creepy or atmospheric here at all. There's a lot of nudity but most of the cast aren't exactly model material if you know what I mean.Nightmare looks every bit as low budget as is so obviously was, I just don't see anything here that impressive. The photography is point & shoot stuff, there are no special effects, there's no style or atmosphere & there's nothing here to distinguish it from the hundreds of low budget shot on a camcorder flicks out there. The acting didn't impress me, I thought it was terrible to be honest.Nightmare is like it's title suggests a bit of a nightmare, to watch that is. Everyone is entitled to an opinion & for those of you who rated this an 8 or 9 that's fine, for me though I thought this was absolutely terrible & an incredibly frustrating mess of a film to watch.

MrCarey An impressive first feature with solid acting, lots of nudity, blood and gore and a plot that tumbles under and eats itself in concentric circles. (Whatever that means…). I must admit, I walked in 32 minutes late at the Boston Underground Film Festival screening and but was immediately stuck by the images and action and remained riveted right up until the ending that was handled with the right mix of ambiguity and clarity of 'clues'—to lead you to believe you understood what happened, but was not quite sure. I think that's a good quality to leave an audience with for this kind of picture. I mean, what would life be without mystery?I particularly liked the bald creepy crew member who, in one shot, looks exactly like Robert Blake in Lost Highway—a film that was definitely an inspiration for this one. The high def video looks great—just like film--and it's quite a professional piece of work. Plus, this film had the most gorgeous shot of all the films I saw at this years BUFF, but I'm not going to tell you which one.

izzyfnlee I had the pleasure of viewing Bank's film at the Boston Underground Film Festival recently. The theater was packed, and the director was on hand for an introduction and Q & A, to which the audience was very receptive. This film is one of the best I've seen in a long time, and for a first feature, this film presents itself as a phenomenal work. The acting is excellent- the leads have won numerous awards at several festivals, as well as the film itself, and of course, Mr. Banks. The film has a touch of Lost Highway as well as American Psycho, and nearly from the start, you descend into a type of madness into which you cannot escape, because reality versus perhaps another plane of existence blur continuously until the bitter end. With a film as strong as this, I was surprised to learn how young the director is- it seems as if he's been doing this for at least a decade. Everything about the production is very professional- I would not be surprised if Lion's Gate picked this up for distribution and released it in theaters. I hope that happens. This is a film that deserves to be seen. It crawls under your skin in a perverse, horrific, and sexually exciting way. And I'm a film programmer myself. I should know. No matter what film snobs may say, this is an audience film and one that's very enjoyable and deserves to put this director on the map.