Studio:      Gravitas Ventures
Director:    Gene Blalock
Writer:      Jhan Harp, Rob Stith
Producer:  Jhan Harp
Stars:     Amber Benson, Kevin Chamberlin, Mat Devine, Mieko Hillman, Rahul Parikh, Nichole Eberle

Review Score:

Summary:

When her student disappears under strange circumstances, an anthropology professor becomes obsessed with solving a cryptic mystery connected to an ancient god.

Synopsis:

Anthropology student Sanjay Ramdas excitedly calls Professor Samantha Rand to tell her that he finally obtained the alchemical manuscript from the cult of Hermes. During Sanjay’s research, the tome mysteriously disappears. Something unseen attacks Sanjay. Sam arrives to discover Sanjay also vanished.

Three years later, Sam remains obsessed with finding Sanjay. Department head Thomas repeatedly warns Sam that the constant distraction interferes with her job.

Sam goes home to her wife Dawn. An anonymous delivery arrives containing cryptic texts and ancient artifacts including several dice with strange symbols. Believing the materials link to Sanjay’s disappearance, Sam continues digging into the mystery.

Sam has a nightmare involving a mask found in the package. Sam cuts herself on the mask when she wakes.

When Sam fails to show up for her class, student Chloe Bishop finds Sam doing research in the library. Missing person flyers for Sanjay remind Chloe of her sister who disappeared. Sam agrees to let Chloe help her search for Sanjay.

Chloe meets Dawn when Sam brings her home. Chloe connects one of the symbols on a die to a schizophrenia study conducted by psychiatrist Dr. Stockton in 2015. Dawn takes Chloe home.

Sam has a nightmare involving Sanjay, Dawn, and Chloe. Sam wakes coughing up blood. After Sam gets out of bed, Dawn becomes entranced as black smoke enters her mouth.

Sam goes to see Dr. Stockton to ask about the runic symbols. Dr. Stockton allows Sam to see his mentally unstable patient Colton Bishop, who drew the symbols. Colton cryptically warns that the dice were stolen from someone who is now watching Sam and the only way to escape is to die.

Thomas admonishes Sam for missing another department meeting at the college. Sam tells Chloe what she discovered at the asylum.

Staring at a die causes a vision where Sam becomes one of Dr. Stockton’s imprisoned patients. In the dream, Colton convinces Sam to slash herself with a straight razor. Sam wakes up having cut her hand.

Sam goes home where Chloe converses with Dawn about Sam being reprimanded. Sam reveals she can now inexplicably translate the pictographs that were in the mysterious package. Sam connects clues to Homer’s “The Odyssey,” but cannot fully solve the cipher. Sam throws a book toward Chloe in frustration.

Sam has a nightmare in which she follows a blood trail to a demonic voice. Sam finds Dawn dead. The voice explains that Dawn has become a sacrificial offering to give Sam passage.

Sam wakes up to find Dawn discarding the artifacts. Dawn explains that Sam’s worrying behavior is causing their marriage to unravel. Following their confrontation, Sam leaves to spend the night in her office.

Sam has another nightmare after taking Nyquil. In the dream, Sanjay plants a book on a shelf under Colton’s direction. Sanjay then becomes possessed and strangles Sam.

Sam wakes up choking. Sam looks for the book she saw in her dream and finds more cryptic clues.

Dawn talks to Chloe about Sam’s increasingly alarming behavior. The two women search Sam’s office and discover Sam is planning something that coincides with an upcoming crescent moon.

Based on a clue about being awake and asleep simultaneously, Sam combines uppers with Nyquil. Sam dreams of a museum-like mansion with an ‘Alchemical Theater’ where she encounters Sanjay. Sanjay taunts Sam about purposefully poisoning herself, although Sam finds an admission ticket and a map when she wakes.

Thomas finds Sam unconscious on her office floor. Sam recovers in a hospital. Dawn explains that Sam nearly fell into a coma.

Dawn discovers the map when she cleans up Sam’s office. Chloe calls Dawn to report Sam fled from the hospital. Dawn says she knows where Sam is going.

Sam arrives at the mysterious museum/mansion seen in her dream. Sam escapes encounters with a murderous security guard, a human-creature hybrid, and a deformed girl before meeting a strange docent. The docent takes Sam to see Sanjay.

Sanjay tells Sam that the manuscript was a trap set by Colton to lead them to the mysterious museum. However, Sanjay insists they can unlock solutions to all of humanity’s ills if Sam can finish translating the book. Sanjay leaves Sam to translate the manuscript when the security guard calls him away.

Security shows Sanjay that Dawn is being held hostage. Sanjay ends up cutting Dawn’s throat.

When Sanjay returns, Sam explains that the malevolent god Thoth is manipulating them. Sam worries that his obsession with the manuscript has blinded Sanjay. Sanjay still insists on reciting the translated incantation that will summon Thoth.

While Sanjay reads aloud from the book, Sam confronts the security guard about why Sanjay was called away. Following a fight, Sam kills the guard.

Sam discovers Dawn’s dead body. Sam tearfully confronts Sanjay, who is now fully entranced, about her wife’s murder. Thoth appears. Using memories of their past friendship, Sam tries appealing to Sanjay to stop Thoth’s summoning. With Sanjay unable to fully break free from the spell, Sam kills Sanjay. Thoth grabs Sam and they both vanish from the museum.

Chloe goes to see Sam, who is now imprisoned as an insane patient of Dr. Stockton’s. Sam merely repeats a single phrase over and over.

Chloe also confronts Colton over the trouble he caused. Colton says it falls on Chloe to set the next seeker on their path.

Review:

Movies like “The Nightmare Gallery” cause me to question why I continue covering low-budget projects Kickstarted into the home video horror space. It’s not even because the movies are bad. Although I’m increasingly cognizant of time’s value the older I get, I’ve wasted enough of it on forgettable fright flicks that another 90 minutes now and then doesn’t lead me to lose sleep.

What actually irks me are the additional hours spent mentally revisiting lame films in order to write a review. Unflattering words also invite attacks from cast and crew masquerading as anonymous commenters in organized hate campaigns. Or in cases of honest intentioned filmmakers who simply produced something poorly, a critic runs the risk of crushing fragile feelings harmlessly operating in a negligible niche of fringe cinema.

What’s the return on investing in these misspent hours, headaches, and harassment? To inform the small portion of people interested in an under-the-radar indie that it’s just another disposable DTV’er destined for obscurity? Ten times out of ten, viewers can determine this themselves from a trailer or quick background check to learn no known names are involved.

That’s where I’m at with “The Nightmare Gallery,” which qualifies for all of the concerns above. More average than appalling, “The Nightmare Gallery” is another throwaway thriller whose limited lease on audience interest will expire long before this review becomes a ghost town no one visits either.

Let’s go through perfunctory motions so we can move on to more productive things in our lives. Don’t be surprised if reduced brainpower restricts creativity to straightforward declarative sentences. I’m only following the movie’s uninspiring example.

Having progressed (regressed?) to the Mischa Barton “get in, get out, grab an easy buck” stage of her acting career, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” alum Amber Benson stars as anthropology professor Sam Rand. Sam is in a same-sex marriage with her wife Dawn. It’s terrific that “The Nightmare Gallery” proudly touts this as a hook of LGBTQ inclusion, yet it’s another arbitrary detail with no real resonance. Dawn could be a green dwarf and it would make no meaningful difference.

To odd degrees for a platonic pupil relationship, Sam is more interested in her student Sanjay. Sanjay recently acquired an ancient manuscript and Sam is as eager to read it as he is. Weirdly, Sam finds Sanjay mysteriously missing when she arrives at his place. The old tome is gone too, knocking over the first dominoes on Sam’s obsessive trail to uncover what happened.

Three years later, Sam’s search for Sanjay continues. I can’t imagine why, but Sam continues putting up missing person flyers in the same places they’ve already been for 36 months. Despite having no new leads, her doggedness is almost admirable. Sam’s determination also causes rifts in her marriage while earning admonishment from her university supervisor as well.

A break comes when a package arrives containing “cryptic” clues. Cryptic is in quotation marks because of how broadly that word applies to “The Nightmare Gallery.” Cryptic best describes the deliriously indecipherable story, overwrought dialogue, and indeterminate ideas motivating the movie’s existence. Get comfortable with confusedly scratching your scalp literally while Sam frustratingly does it figuratively.

The delivery curiously coincides with second student Chloe taking a sudden interest in assisting Sam’s research. Chloe’s serendipitous arrival comes with questions regarding who she really is, what she really wants, and what she might know about Sanjay’s disappearance. The following would be a spoiler if anyone actually cared. But hilariously, Chloe turns out to be exactly what she says she is: an ancillary supporting character siphoning screen time from Sam’s wife without turning any twist into the plot whatsoever.

An asylum inmate, played by an actor clearly only crazy while the camera is rolling even though his character has been in a padded cell for three years, adds more ranting and raving. Pictographs, nightmares, and more hullaballoo eventually pause the runaround long enough to make up a bizarre mystery involving a museum in a mansion, more visions, and something about a malevolent god trying to do who knows what. I finished the entire film moments ago and I’m still not sure what I watched.

Yelling constitutes impassioned acting as far as the director seems concerned, although angry emotions come across more convincingly than when anyone turns on tears for a blubbering breakdown. Horrible monster makeups, mercifully seen sparingly, seem sculpted from unpainted Silly Putty. I wanted to include a third note to round out this paragraph, but I don’t know what else to say to someone who might somehow still sit on the fence at this point.

Hopefully, my efforts here weren’t in vain and you’ve been spared a needless expenditure of an hour and a half. If it’s too late, take solace that you only lost the additional five minutes it took to read this far. Throw a pitying thought my way for losing half of a day to “The Nightmare Gallery” with only these fleeting words to show for it.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score: 30