When A Movie Feels Like A Nightmare

Summary

The narrator opens with a childhood memory of lying awake in his grandparents’ house, convinced something was watching from the darkness. He says he has long wanted a movie to capture the hazy, ambiguous feeling of a nightmare. Skinamarink and Sinister come close, he says, but 1974: The Possession of Altair stands out for him.

The film follows newlyweds Manuel and Altair, along with their dog, Carlo. Shot on 8-mm film, it has a grainy, authentically ’70s look that the narrator credits with much of its unsettling atmosphere. The story begins with odd incidents the couple initially brush aside: Altair claims an “angel” spoke to her in the night, and a flock of birds crashes into the house. Soon, Altair’s behavior grows increasingly strange. She has nosebleeds, seems detached from reality, and starts painting bricks black after saying the angels instructed her to build portals. Manuel grows frustrated as she calmly avoids his questions.

The narrator highlights how the movie’s scattered scenes and abrupt cuts make it feel less like a conventional horror story and more like watching someone else’s disjointed home movies. The unease builds through quiet, dark moments: Manuel searching the woods for Carlo, Altair wandering outside with a doll, and the couple hearing a mysterious droning sound. A particularly eerie image is Altair sitting beneath a lone light bulb, painting bricks in a basement. The narrator jokes that Manuel’s decision to let Carlo outside at night may not have been the best idea—and things get worse when the dog returns looking much bigger and possibly not quite the same.

Altair’s sister, Tere, reveals that Altair had a younger brother, Pablo, who vanished from his cradle when Altair was six. Altair had been deeply attached to him, and the family never spoke about his disappearance afterward. As the strange events escalate, Carlo is found mutilated, Altair sits motionless with a knife, and her former psychoanalyst, Dr. Conseco, suggests she has a cataleptic disorder. That diagnosis, however, does little to explain the dead birds, strange calls, or what comes next.

In one of the film’s most disturbing scenes, Manuel and the others find Altair in the basement, covered by a sheet with blood streaming from her eyes. She says she doesn’t want to dream anymore and recalls being taken somewhere horrible, where the angels said God wanted to have a child with her. Then the movie abruptly shifts into UFO territory: a spacecraft appears, and the characters flee. Callahan gets separated from the others, hears screams in the woods, and finds Altair desperately stabbing at herself as if trying to remove something inside her. The aliens eventually take her, leaving Callahan to run into the darkness.

The narrator admits that the shift from possession story to alien-abduction story initially confused him, but argues that the movie plants clues throughout. He connects the birds, phone interference, paralysis, memory problems, and Altair’s physical symptoms to UFO “close encounter” accounts. The title, he says, deliberately encourages viewers to interpret everything as possession.

Ultimately, the narrator’s biggest praise is for the film’s nightmare-like atmosphere: its murky visuals, deep shadows, silences, incomplete explanations, and scenes that cut off as if the camera has run out of film. The movie gives viewers enough clues to form their own interpretation, but keeps the larger picture just out of reach—making its confusion part of the horror.

Characters Mentioned

• Nightmare Movies narrator — Reviewer and storyteller
• Manuel — Altair’s husband
• Altair — The film’s central character
• Carlo — The couple’s dog
• Tere — Altair’s sister
• Callahan — Manuel’s friend
• Dr. Conseco — Altair’s former psychoanalyst
• Pablo — Altair’s missing younger brother