The Nightmare Gallery

Before we even get to the movie, let’s all take a minute to soak in the promo image I’ve used as this review’s header. Yeah, there’s another official poster for The Nightmare Gallery I could’ve used. But it’s way less stupid than the above glorious photoshop failure. I absolutely adore it. As for the movie itself? The Nightmare Gallery is slightly better, but much less interesting than you might think from looking at this review’s header image.

Amber Benson plays Sam Rand, a professor of anthropology. At the start of the film, we see the events that lead to one of her students going missing. The student, Sanjay has just come into possession of a spooky, ancient book. But before Sam can meet with Sanjay, he disappears. Months later, Sam receives a package. The contents of that package? Oh my god! It’s the spooky book! Sam begins to dig deeper into Sanjay’s disappearance. Assisting her is a new student named Chloe. But as Sam continues to search, she begins having troubling dreams. These dreams begin to bleed into her waking life and make her uncertain of reality. Of course, all of this leads back to the spooky book which is linked to a mysterious extra-dimensional place… The Nightmare Gallery itself.

I’m annoyed when horror movies have the majority of scary stuff happen in dream sequences. And that’s absolutely the first 2/3s of The Nightmare Gallery. Sam’s waking life has more of a shitty mystery vibe. Her dreams are the source of the horror moments, though these moments absolutely fail to be scary. The film has a problem with sound effects and music stingers which really take away from the horror. For the first two acts, in the waking world, we really just see Sam get increasingly dark circles under her eyes as a sign that she’s struggling. And there’s also some vague conflict with Sam’s wife, Dawn. But I figure that sort of relationship drama is pretty normal when you’ve introduced a spooky book into the proceedings.

In fairness, the film goes beyond dream sequences for the third act. The film lives up to its title and takes us to The Nightmare Gallery or, The Museum. And they obviously tried to make it creative and scary. I’ll say this for The Nightmare Gallery, there is a concept here. The film does have a stronger story and ideas than a lot of horror movies made at this price point. I think the filmmaker was actually excited to realize this idea of a scary, extra-dimensional museum. It’s just a shame that the nightmare gallery itself does end up being what is clearly just some guy’s house. The director’s, I bet. They do their best with lighting and some easy to depict horror creatures, but it’s not enough. It just looks like a local haunted house; one that nobody above the age of 10 would find actually frightening.

If you wanted to see Amber Benson do another role where she plays a lesbian in a supernatural horror story, you’ll be disappointed. The Nightmare Gallery fulfills that requirement, but not to any degree of quality. The quality mostly relating to the supernatural horror element of the story, which is the focus. The lesbian element is mostly fine. If anything, it’s quite boring. Sam just has a wife. She loves her wife. Her wife worries about her mental health. But boring lesbians is still something of a win given the history of lesbianism is low budget horror. If you’re a Buffy fan, this isn’t going to fill the void left by the show or Amber Benson’s character. Nothing will. Trust me, I’ve looked.

With horror movies, I always feel like I could really whittle the review down to one question: is the movie scary? The Nightmare Gallery is not scary. Failing that, I do wish it was a little funnier. That header image promises a bit of a trainwreck of messy visuals and ideas. Sadly, the movie holds together just slightly too well to be amusingly messy. And it takes until the last act for it to be much beyond a lame mystery movie where a woman has some bad dreams. The film does open with text letting you know that there’s a post-credits sequence. So maybe someday, we’ll get The Nightmare Gallery 2. And I would absolutely watch it.

Overall rating: 2.9/10

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