At the end of May or perhaps the beginning of June, I watched a pseudo-documentary called “The Nightmare.”  My IGN review went live at the beginning of June but for some reason a link never ended up over here.

Well, not for some reason, for a very specific reason — the movie made me angry.  It treats an actual medical condition as though it were a paranormal phenomena, marginalizing those who suffer from it and eschewing any sort of scientific fact.  There are no doctors present in the movie, there are no experts, only a small group of sufferers.  The stories offered by the individuals are, indeed, horrific but the film’s purposefully avoiding putting them into any sort of context is offensive in the extreme.

You can tell the story with as much style as you want–and the movie is indeed stylistic–but when you talk about science and medicine it is important to talk about science and medicine.

To me, it all feeds into a portion of our society’s desire to denigrate experts.  If virtually all doctors and researchers say vaccines are safe, they’re safe.  If the biologists who have spent their lives looking at evolution say it’s real, it’s real.  If climate scientists tell us we’re changing our environment, then we’re changing our environment.  The average person is not an expert on everything and there is nothing diminishing about looking to people in the know for answers.

But, enough of that.  The review is live, check it out.

photo credit: Gravitas Ventures

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Nightmare, The Nightmare