Starring: Olga Kurylenko, Craig Conway, Javier Botet, and Rosie Fellner.
I just got done watching this movie on netflix. my first thoughts when watching this is it's little bit of A Nightmare On Elm Street rip off. This isn't the first film I've seen where sleep paralysis plays the role of the eventual killer either. Another film that I recalled watching had a very, very similar theme to it. Actually, while watching this I started to wonder, had I already seen this film? Scene by scene I was able to sense what was going to happen next. Maybe it's just my psychic intuition at play but I seriously doubted it so I searched the internet and came across a movie that I had seen a while ago and had almost completely forgot about. The name of this earlier film is "Dead Awake." First I'll say that both films are pretty good. They didn't scare me but movies seldom do anymore. There are some really creepy moments and if you're not really into ghostly horror films, you probably won't like this movie. Now from here I'm going to discuss more of what the movie is about and try not to really give away any good plot points though I have to warn you that spoilers are ahead. So, if you haven't seen either movie, you might not want to read the rest of this post. For those who do read on, I hope you enjoy.
**SPOILERS**
So, the main similarity in both of these films is that each of them features a ghost or demon like creature from mythology. In Mara she is called Mara, and in Dead Awake they simply refer to her as the old hag. There isn't any real back ground story as to where this entity comes from and what it wants (other than to kill people in their sleep) which was kind of a let down for me. At least with Freddy we find out why he was so hell bent on killing all of the elm street children.
Mara, or the old hag, just seems to be an evil entity that likes to scare the shit out of anyone who feels guilty over something and then strangle them in their sleep.
I have to re-watch Dead Awake to give a good synopsis of this film, but from what I recall, the demon hag in that film attacks those who believe in her. This turned out to be a key factor in being killed by Freddy in the later films though in the beginning that didn't seem to matter. Nancy and her friends had never even heard of the guy before he started coming into their dreams and stalking them, yet he had no trouble picking off the elm street kids one by one. It wasn't until the film Freddy vs. Jason came out that Freddy needed people to believe in him in order for him to gain the strength to kill. This was why he resurrected Jason and sent him to Elm street, so people would remember. People did remember but eventually his plan backfired and he and Jason had a no holds barred match at crystal lake.
Unlike the previous two mentioned sleep demons, Mara herself does not need to be believed in nor even known about to attack someone. She is simply brought out by a terrible tragedy like a school cook poisoning over 30 children, or a war in which innocent blood is spilled. Once released though she clings to a person who feels some guilt over something in their life. Once she marks that person by turning their eyes red she comes to them in 4 stages, the last stage being their death.
You can avoid being killed by her by not falling asleep (yeah cause that works out so well) or by simply releasing the guilt that you hold over whatever it is that you blame yourself for.
There is a scene in Mara that takes place in a sleep lab that feels a lot like the scene where Nancy pulled Freddy's hat out of her dream. Mara sits atop her victim and breaks his neck as the main character -who can also see her because she too has been marked- watches on in horror, unable to move because she suddenly suffers from sleep paralysis, something that up until the events of this film apparently never afflicted her before. How convenient.
In Mara, the demon jumps from person to person, choking the life out of each of them. It seems like there were just a lot of guilty ass people in this town. I suppose that the film is supposed to speak to our subconscious though and show Mara as a manifestation of the secret demons we each carry inside. I'm really glad this is only a movie though because if my past sins came back to haunt me, I'd be dead before morning for sure.
All in all, it's a pretty good movie, if not a bit cliche. Still it had a few good jump scares but the plot was way to similar to Dead Awake and out of the two I would have to say the latter is the better movie. It was released in 2016 by the way, and Mara was released in 2018.
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