'The Nightmare' Trailer: 'Room 237' Director Takes On Horrors Of Sleep

Rodney Ascher made his big-screen debut with the documentary Room 237, which gave voice to crazy fan theories about The Shining, and in the process explored the ways we interact with films and our assumptions about filmmakers. Now Ascher is tackling a subject that is much closer to home for some people: sleep paralysis.

In The Nightmare, Ascher interviews subjects who suffer from sleep paralysis — where one is awake, but completely unable to move, and sometimes beset by hallucinations — and then recreates these very personal visions and terrors. The result is a film Germain called "absolutely horrifying" when it premiered at Sundance.

Check out The Nightmare trailer after the jump.

Trailer via Apple. The Nightmare opens in theaters and on iTunes on June 5.

From the director of "Room 237" comes a documentary-horror film exploring the phenomenon of sleep paralysis through the eyes of 8 very different people. These people (and a surprisingly large number of others) often find themselves trapped between the sleeping & waking worlds, totally unable to move but aware of their surroundings while being subject to frequently disturbing sights and sounds. Strangely, despite the fact that they know nothing of one another and had never heard of sleep paralysis before it happened to them, many see similar ghostly "shadow men." Just one of many reasons people insist this is more than just a sleep disorder. The film digs deep into not only the particulars of these 8 people's uncanny experiences through elaborate, sometimes surreal dramatizations, but also explores their search to understand what they've gone through and how it's changed their lives.