THIS strange blend of interview documentary and familiar horror film cliches follows the experiences of eight very different people, the majority US citizens and, bizarrely, a Mancunian who suffer from sleep paralysis.

The participants in director Rodney S Ascher’s film frequently find themselves trapped between the sleeping and waking worlds where, unable to move, they are aware of their surroundings while being subjected to disturbing sights and sounds.

It would be hard, not to say heartless, not to sympathise with the nocturnal terrors described by the participants as every sufferer from night terrors would realise.

Yet the film has major flaws.

No scientific explanations for sleep paralysis are offered and the collated evidence of the subjects becomes repetitious.

And Ascher’s visual dramatisations of the collective dreams are cliched and detract from the real-life narrative.