Jessie and Mark Hobson are a young couple plunged into a deep crisis following the tragic death of their son Sean. To give a boost to their relationship, the two decide to adopt a child with the conviction that such a gesture can help them overcome the trauma. Thus, the young Cody arrives at home, a sensitive boy with a sharp intelligence and a unique quality that makes him afraid to fall asleep: his dreams indeed become reality and involve the people around him. Cody's powers manage to materialize butterflies first and then the little Sean, with the parents who manage to re-hug, albeit for a few moments, their son. Everything is fine until Jessie and Mark discover that all this does not only concern dreams, but also nightmares and the unsettling presence, called by Cody "Cancer Man," that dwells in the mind of the young protagonist. The adoptive mother, driven by an emotional bond now strong towards Cody, decides to investigate the boy's family past to discover the origin of the monsters created by his mind.
Mike Flanagan is one of those directors whose style, whether you like it or not, is now consolidated and recognizable as it is based on the repetition of typical stylistic elements of the genre adapted for stories whose central focus is no longer characterized only by the continuous search for easy scares, but also by the attention paid to the psychology of the characters and their inner conflicts. It was like this in "Oculus," where a mirror becomes the means to unfold a family drama, and the same thing happens in "The Nightmare," Flanagan's new work, in which the American director revisits two worlds dear to the genre, the dream world and the child world, to give shape to a story full of tension, fear, and tenderness immersed in atmospheres halfway between fantasy and pure horror. An ambitious idea that is not easy to adapt and succeeds only in part due to a plot that, although supported by a more than solid screenplay, forgets in some points its main objective, which is to convey unease.
With more than one wink to films like "Babadook" and the titles produced by Guillermo del Toro, "The Nightmare" does not intend to be a conventional horror and focuses on the elaboration of grief, both from the child's and the adult's point of view. It is indeed interesting the way Flanagan, who is also the screenwriter of the film together with Jeff Howard, describes the dynamics of a couple divided by two completely opposite ways, and also typical of such a situation, of absorbing the loss of the son: on one side we have a more rational person, Mark, and capable of trying to start a new life with the adopted son; on the other, on the contrary, Jessie has never overcome the trauma and every time she goes near the bathtub she relives every moment of Sean's death.
The same process occurs within the young Cody, who lives the contrast between the dream world that plunges him back into the nightmare of his mother's death and reality that instead forces him to face new experiences and be afraid of sleeping. The result is a story, especially in the first part, very dramatic, intense in conveying emotions, and rather effective in keeping on edge a spectator who empathizes with the characters and their moods.
The film's problems, however, emerge in all their evidence in the second half when the psychological horror shell gives way to a conventional plot and this does nothing but highlight all the limits of Flanagan when it comes to building atmospheres of tension and fear. "The Nightmare" proves to be a not very incisive horror, mild, and even the boogeyman of the situation, "Cancer Man," is a figure not very unsettling, only in part redeemed by its emotional meaning explained in a sappy ending, loaded with excessive sentimentalism and almost tear-jerking.
If the dramatic part appears solid and well-conceived, the credit must also be given to a cast in which, with the exception of the impalpable interpretation of Thomas Jane as Mark, the real stars are the young and brilliant Jacob Tremblay and Kate Bosworth, very skillful in holding the scene in several moments.
"The Nightmare," in conclusion, represents a considerable step forward for Flanagan, who however still has to find the right compromise between a well-written story and the dynamics of pure horror film. Grade rounded up for excess.
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