Review: the terror of sleep paralysis in ‘Come True’

Pitch black swallowed me whole. I could feel cool midnight air rustling hairs on the nape of my neck. I wandered through what seemed to be an endless eternity, pools of shadow men dancing around my feet, and my limbs didn’t want to work. I grunted as a wrenched my body this way and that, yet my meager frame remained motionless and frightened. A moody, ominous, almost shapeless cloud peeked out from the corner and creeped toward my bed. I tightened in terror, my breathing accelerated, and my heart clattered in my ribcage. With no distinct features, this gliding entity no sooner feathered my bed sheets when I lurched out of slumber. I bolted upright. Panic arresting my veins. I was sure someone was there, still lurking, in dark, dusty corners. But there was no one.

That was the first time I had sleep paralysis. I was no older than five or six. In 30 years, such demonic revelry descends upon me. It’s not often; in fact, it’s likely been almost a year since any shadowy figures have appeared and left my gasping and my body nearly paralyzed. That might be most terrifying of all, the not knowing, the anticipating, the “will it happen tonight?” sort of thing. Anthony Scott Burns’ Come True, based upon a story by Daniel Weissenberger, pulverized my senses, yanking me back into my own emotional and sensory entrapment. Through one young woman’s struggle against sleep and her own nighttime hellhounds, I could see myself not only reflecting back in her sorrow- and exhaustion-laden eyes but those night terrors that are so alarming you begin to question your sanity.

Come True tells the tale of Sarah Dunne (Julia Sarah Stone), who’s already stricken with the worst kind of sleep paralysis you might imagine. Torturous shapes and figures come to her at night, and it’s become so overwhelming she’s downright terrified to even sleep a wink. It’s torment to know, or at least firmly believe, that even a cat nap could inflict the darkest and most raw sort of hypnotic sorcery around your body (like being bound permanently by Nancy). When your agency, in whatever form it may be, is looted from you, you feel as if you’re being punished and you have no worth in the world. The film spends much of its runtime depicting Sarah’s spiraling descent into literal hell, a maddening maze that seems imposed upon her by her own body and mind. She’s soon admitted into a sleep clinic to do a trial, and you’d think experts may be able to help her. But her reality is grim, and they simply exacerbate her problems.

As a chronic insomniac, there are many days I wander from weary sleeplessness to debilitating fear. And there’s frequently never an in-between. It’s purgatory where I’m strapped to a table and the razor-sharp pendulum inches closer and closer to gutting my stomach wide open and filleting my insides. It’s an inevitability I can not stop, a slow march to “death,” so to speak. Witnessing Sarah sink further and further into oppressive darkness is like reliving the worst moments of my own sleep difficulties — and the film’s ending is one of my biggest, all-time fears.

As Dr. Erwin Kompanje summarizes: “Most often there is pervasive fear, sometimes so strong that people are sure they are about to die and are afraid to go to sleep again. Other parts of their hallucination, which may include people, animals, parts of objects, or just shapes, have a nightmarish quality. People visualize intruders, demons, spirits, animals or vampires in their bedroom; they see someone or something coming through the window, they hear footsteps getting closer and they fear they would be killed or raped in their bed being unable to escape.”

Later, he cites Dutch physician Isbrand Van Diemerbroeck and a case dating around 1664 about a 50-year-old woman who “believed the devil lay upon her and held her down, sometimes that she was choaked [sic] by a great dog or thief lying upon her breast, so that she could hardly speak or breath, and when she endeavoured to throw off the burthen, she was not able to stir her members.” He labeled such a confoudning affliction as “Incubus” or “the Night‐Mare.”

Well, a nightmare it most certainly is. It’s almost impossible to explain exactly what the experience is — perhaps its like someone holding you under the water, and you can fill the burn of your lungs as water fills your chest cavity. You jerk your limbs, and even scream with no sound, but it’s no use. No one can hear you. And no one is coming to save you. The pressure builds and builds, and you can only wait until whatever force has possessed you to loosen its gnarly grasp. Come True perfectly captures this experience, and so much more. It’s stylish, emotional, provocative, and true tour de force of gutting storytelling.

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