Note: This review is part of my coverage of Horrorfest II.
Nightmare Man
A married couple gamble on a mask of the fertility god to improve their love life. Turns out the mask is hideous, and worse yet, harbors a demon. The wifey starts going crazy, and it soon becomes less than clear whether this "nightmare man" is a real killer or just a figment of her imagination. Or is it both?
An early portion of the movie, where the wifey is trapped in the car with the Nightmare Man lurking about trying more to scare her than to kill her, was in a way reminiscent of Penny Dreadful from last year's Horrorfest. Then there's a hilarious sequence which cuts back and forth between the wife running through the forest, trying to get away from the Nightmare Man, and a group of four young adults in a forest cabin playing erotic truth or dare. The scene climaxes quite literally with screams that could easily be attributed to either pain or pleasure. The rest of the film takes place at the cabin, as the wifey and the foursome try to make sense of what's happening, and whether or not the Nightmare Man is real.
I'm not an expert on "camp" movies, horror or otherwise, but this one definitely gave off the impression that its point wasn't to scare its audience, but simply to entertain them. Yet, I enjoyed it. Instead of being stupid, the movie was actually entertaining. And even having said all that, it still managed to pack a few scares, like making the masked face in the dark scary again. I'll always be more drawn to the completely serious movies, but I'm willing to toss this one into the bin of "fun movies".
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