Joko Anwar's Nightmares and Daydreams

I found this series surprisingly fresh and unlike anything I have seen before. It may have similarities to cabinet of curiosities and black mirror in its concept, but it differs in the way I'm which it brings everything to a close. It highlights the economic struggles in Indonesia but also the difficulties we face as humans in daily life, thereby crossing borders and uniting us as one, no matter where we reside on this planet. A good watch indeed! I hope nexflix endorse more shows like this in the future as it is right up my alley. I have watched plenty of Korean shows before but never anything from Indonesia. I must say I am impressed.

I'm a South Korean and this was my first Indonesian show and it literally blew my mind. Amazing!! This unique show deals with social issues in the form of horror and science fiction with mind-blowing twists and amazing visual effects and acting. It reminded me of Black Mirror, but in a very unique way.

The images delicately show the reality (both bright and dark) of Indonesian society. I could feel as if I am in Jakarta and I could deeply relate with the social issues of the country.

It deals with such a variety of issues like poverty, domestic violence, ableism, ageism, child abuse, and etc, in the form of horror and science fiction. This way, the story gives you so much emotional impact that you just cannot stop watching it.

I watched the show overnight and finished all of the episodes in a day. I could not even sleep. Amazing work. I don't think I can get over from this show for a while...

Not saying I'm completely disappointed, well maybe a bit, but I just to imagine it were that based on what I expected and speculated from the trailer and not some kind of interconnected stories with the climax at the final episode, it would have been more interesting to me. I have no problem with the CGI, for a non-hollywood production series it's kinda okay, though I agree it can be improved for the later seasons. Like all Joko Anwar's projects, it brought his seemingly untamable bias of some rigid acting and dialogue in some parts by some of the actors. Scoring is fine and the plots are as usual: slightly better in concept than execution. But without Joko, who would be so brave and competent enough to pull this off in Indonesia? All in all, I'm satisfied and not feeling a little bit of regret spending my time finishing this series off in one go

7.5/10.

As an Indonesian, I'm surprised we actually got this kind of quality.

I haven't watched a lot of Indonesian movie lately (or ever actually) because I really can't get into them. Usually the acting is really bad and the dialogues are cringe as well. The production is also usually pretty bad and low budget...

And so, I was surprised how delightful this series was. The production was definitely a step up from usual. Hell, the cgi was actually pretty good too and wow, the story is not bad at all.

It is far from perfect, like some episodes are stronger than the other (for me personally I like ep 3 the most, then 2), and there were some wtf moments that are not that great and dragged out (and don't get me started on the last episode and that girl who only has 1 emotion and can barely act...)

But overall, it was a pleasant watch. I love the horror stories and the Lovecraftian vibe. I won't mind having another s2 but will need some tighter story and scenes.

Plot

Ordinary people encountering strange phenomenons that may be keys to the answer about the origin of our world and the imminent threat we will soon face.

Cast

Not really familiar with anybody involved, not even Anwar surprisingly.

Verdict

Me and Indonesian horror so far have actually done pretty well, there have been some great films come out of the country so that plus my love of anthology horror series made me very excited for Nightmares and Daydreams (Not to be confused with Nightmares & Dreamscapes which I keep accidentally referring to it as). But did it deliver? Well yes, and in equal measure no.

So the first couple of episodes reeled me in perfectly, this was good stuff! Nothing ground breaking but original well constructed tales, but single only complaint was that they both had a single scene tacked onto the end that felt totally unnecessary. The quality began to wane and varied from average to really quite poor and that insistence on confusing final scenes continued, it had finished there was already a resolution and yet it still hit you with something it really didn't need to!

And then we reached our swan song when they decided to do something unusual, something breaking the mould of horror anthologies, something that I won't mention as I don't do spoilers here but I'll commend them on the effort but slam them for how badly they did it.

You'll see consistent themes throughout the tales, poverty, employment, desperation and the reach for a better life. Some work, some don't, but the inconsistent quality, confusing writing choices and very eyebrow raising final episode leave it all a bit of a mess.

Rants

The trend at the moment is that the vast majority of shows are being cancelled on cliff hangers, rendering them pointless watches and incomplete stories. Nightmares and Dreamscapes I went into confident that this wouldn't matter, independent stories after all so cancellation would be sad but not leaving the show in the same sorry state as most. How wrong I was, will it be cancelled? Very likely. Will we get a proper finale and a culmination, I just don't see it.

The Good

Some great stories Wonderfully constructed A few very strong performances Very ambitious finale

The Bad

Some weak stories A few hokey visual effects Finale could have been handled a lot better.