Nightmare Street (1998 TV Movie) User Reviews

Between Two Worlds

[sol-kay · 6/10 · 21 May 2008]

******SPOILERS****** After running into traffic to save her eight year-old daughter Emma, Lauren Dieweld, from getting run over by a truck Joanna Burke, Sherilyn Fenn, finds herself in a hospital bed without as much, after getting hit head on by a runaway truck, as a scratch on her. What Joanna also finds out is that she's in fact not Joanna Burke but someone named Sarah Randolph!

Everything goes straight to pot for Joanna from that point on in the movie with her having to ask questions of those who know her as Sarah Randolph to find out just who she is! Joanna/Sarah's sister Penny, Rena Sofer, who comes to see her in the hospital acts so weird and strange in her answering Joanna's inquiries about her other self, Sarah Randolph, that it starts to dawn on her that she, or Sarah, is some kind of unstable and dangerous psycho.

Joanna later finds out, after getting her sister Penny to finally open up, that she had a young son Eric who was found murdered in the woods outside of town a year ago! This explains why this creepy looking guy, Steve Harris, is always stalking her all throughout the movie! This scary looking weirdo just happens to be Detective Miller who was on the case of her son's murder and is certain that Sarah/Joanna murdered him! Just going through the motions and playing things by ear Joanna slowly finds out that her other self Sarah not only possibly murdered her son Eric but was also having and adulterous affair with her co-worker's, at a P. R firm that she works at, wife Alice!

The movie "Nightmare Street" never quite explains how Joanna got herself into the strange and out of worldly predicament that she finds herself in. Were, like Joanna, given to understand that there's parallel universe's were we all have twins or doubles that sometimes in an act of sudden terror, like getting hit by a truck, can open up a porthole in time and space and push us into them. Joanna for her part, after getting her head back together, never doubts that she somehow entered another woman's mind and body. For the reminder of the movie Joanna tries to get back to the world that she was suddenly taken from away from her friends and family and especially her eight year old daughter Emma. It's Joanna's doctor who treated her at the hospital, Dr. Matt Westbrook (Thomas Gibson), who after thinking that she's suffering from psychological delusions finally came to the conclusion that what happened to her, in her time/space experience, may very well be true and tried to do something about it.

****MAJOR SPOILER**** Not only falling in love with his patient Joanna Dr. Westbrook tries to somehow have, after reading a slew of books about the subject, her deported back to where she came from not quite realizing that he, like Joanna, has a double or twin on the other side. Joanna later finds out that at the town's Pledger Park there's going to be a carousel ride at noon which was exactly what were the circumstances that had her get run down, in trying to save Emma, and put her in the parallel universe that she find herself in now! Sensing that this may well be the porthole that she's looking for to bring her back to reality Joanna plans to be there after, on video tape, confessing her crime as Sarah Randolph in the murder of her son Eric.

It's now a race against time with Joanna trying to get to the park and get transported back to the reality that she came from before the police, who were tipped off by her confession video tape, headed by a determined Det. Miller get there first! If successful the police will not only prevent Joanna from crossing back into her own universal reality but put her as Sarah Randolph behind bars, in the universe that she's in now, for the rest of her life!

One of the best TV movies.

[famousgir1 · 18 October 2001]

******SPOILERS******

Joanna Burk is a woman who after saving her daughter, Emma from an accident wakes up in a hospital in an alternate world where even though she looks the same, every one thinks she's this woman named Sarah. No one remembers who Joanna really is, someone is living in her house, she has a different name and worst of all her daughter, Emma is gone. Now, the real Sarah is actually being accused of murdering her son. Of course, Joanna doesn't have a son, because she's not Sarah, but who's going to believe her. Well, after meeting nice doctor, Matt who ends up falling with love Joanna believes what Joanna is saying and helps her to prove who she really is and to make sure that people know that the real Sarah did in a fact kill her son, with her sister Penny.

Sherilyn Fenn plays both Joanna Burke and Sarah Randolph and she gives a good performance. Rena Sofer plays Sarah's SISTER Penny and she gives a *brilliant* performance as always.

I really enjoyed Nightmare Street, it's a brilliant exciting drama which is great all the way through and features a nice happy ending. Nightmare Street is definitely one of the best TV movies I have ever seen and I give it a 10/10.

Lengthiness Makes Waste

[stefburn · 3/10 · 3 November 2002]

*********S P O I L E R S**************

This movie was so predictable that I figured out the mystery within seconds. Actually any one who has seen The Wizard of Oz will figure it out quickly. A woman named Joanna Burke played by Sherilyn Fenn has an accident while on an outing with her daughter. When she awakens, she is told she is someone else, Sarah Randolph. Sarah Randolph turns out to be a murderer and of her own son. The biggest giveaway comes when she returns to her neighborhood on a couple of occasions. Neither the mailman nor the newstand salesman recognizes her. So I took a weak guess and it turned out to be the right guess. I said a weak guess because I was hoping the writers of this story wouldn't settle for a hackneyed storyline. Silly me.

To make matters worse, the story goes on and on as if to say, "We Know You Know The Ending -- But You'll Never Guess How We're Going To Get To It" This movie should have ended an hour earlier. It's a typical tv movie of the week with the usual one dimensional characters that fails to show the dramatic range of a good supportive cast: Steve Harris, Rena Sofer, and Thomas Gibson. If this had been a dramatic short, at least the viewer could have been spared.

Parallel Universe Concept Handled Weakly In Careless Made For Television Affair.

[rsoonsa · 2/10 · 23 July 2007]

A promising subject from which to craft absorbing narrative design: an awareness of the existence of spatial dimensions parallel to our own, made more compelling by a widespread latter-day theory among physicists that the concept of time itself is a spurious construct, is treated here as merely an element for the production of a silly science fantasy story, having a weak merger of talent that condemns the film to failure from its onset. Any possible form of dramatic intent wants drive in this simple-minded tale based upon inferior material, an account telling of Joanna Burke (Sherilyn Fenn) who has ostensibly moved over into "the other side" after being mowed down by a semi-trailer truck as she is saving the life of her young daughter who is about to be flattened by the same vehicle. After awakening in a hospital, Joanna is informed that she is actually Sarah Randolph, whereas Joanna Burke and her daughter do not, in fact, exist, and it falls upon bewildered Joanna to solve this puzzle of her identity, a task for which she might not have competence, and exacerbated by Sarah's being of an unpleasant sort, perhaps to the point of having strangled her eight year old son to death. A romantic thread is unsurprisingly engendered when the physician treating Joanna/Sarah, played by Thomas Gibson, is determined to become involved with her predicament, and the two struggle along together, when not embracing or seeking to avoid close attention being paid to murder suspect Sarah by a zealous police detective who seemingly has only the Randolph homicide case assigned to him. Overly discursive plot development effaces any chance of suspense being constructed, particularly as to whether or not Joanna will be able to regain her former self along with her daughter, thereby creating only weak entertainment from a film that is further stricken by a glut of risible flaws in logic and continuity, not solely within the screenplay, but additionally relating to rather queer medical and law enforcement policies and procedures.

I expected more!

[DickVG · 3/10 · 1 May 2001]

Based on a theory of Einstein that there are different worlds in past, present and future this TV movie interested me. But even if the castings were satisfying i did not like the movie... The story could have made a great movie.

Bad leading player

[guilfisher-1 · 3/10 · 18 March 2008]

I found this to be rather trite and very bad acting on leading lady, Sherilyn Fenn, and her performance. It seemed odd to me that in every scene, including getting out of bed in the morning, that she had perfect make up on, perfect hair do. Throughout the movie she runs around with a frantic look on her face and no make up smudges, even her beauty mark in place. I felt bad for Thomas Gibson, who I like, and Steve Harris, the cop, who had to do scenes with her.

She was that bad. Can you imagine, in real life, what her pillow must have looked like with all that make up covering it?

I also felt the direction was pretty standard with not much offered to viewers. As to the ending, who knows what was real and unreal? To me, I didn't really care. I was hoping they'd lock her up. Again, LMN does their best to make women victors and men losers. But they pick the wrong actresses most of the time to do it.

Nightmare Street

[cydpowers · 9/10 · 8 October 2006]

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Whoever seems to have foretold the ending has been watching too many movies. It is near Halloween and this is the type of movie I love. It was not too complex to follow and I loved the ending. I found several interesting tricks: Her sister recognizing her, her friends not recognizing her, her seeing her other self in the mirror, seeing her daughter from time to time. At the end she sees the news on TV of her "double" being taken off to jail and then cannot find the channel again. The idea of parallel lives was a nice touch. I love Thomas Gibson (of Dharma and Greg). The final scene where her daughter is saved was great.

Nightmare Street Probability Timelines

[gellie618 · 10/10 · 19 March 2008]

"Nightmare Street" is the first movie I have ever seen that has admitted to the existence of other probability timelines. The great quantum physicist Dr. Hugh Everett proved the existence of the probability timelines from Schrodinger's Equation.

Other movies have presented the false doctrine that if one went into the past one could do horrible harm to the future. Due to clashing quantum probability wave crests this would be impossible; rather, another probability timeline would be entered, and events would proceed normally from there.

Julian Barbour, in his "The End of Time", has shown that the furure is already there. There is just a big stochastic matrix where all the probability timelines possible are there, each probability timeline with its own root.

It is good to at last see a movie that admits to this, the "sixth dimension". What the "sixth"? Harvard University quantum physics professor, Dr. Lisa Randall, has already established that the direction of varying bent timespaces, with values of pi from zero to infinity, is the "fifth dimension".

Christian Theology calls this sixth dimension "kyros time". In it Judas both hung himself in the Gospels, and burst open from a fall in Aceldama in the Book of Acts on another probability timeline. It is good to see some honesty in the movie industry. Congratulations.

ANOTHER GREAT time travel movie!

[nancydrew-1 · 10/10 · 14 July 2005]

I do not see why this movie should get any negative reviews!It is a movie that makes you think "what if time travel did exists?"How can past and future coincide? Mistaken identity? Evil twin?I think it is a clever plot and unique twists,as Joanna tries so hard to find her daughter,and to the truth of what dark secret Sarah holds.A mother's love endures across time and space,as this plot proves true for Joanna. If you like time travel,this is a MUST SEE and HAVE movie!It NEEDS to be released on video or DVD.However be warned that the book IS NOTHING like the movie and is dry,with NO LIKENESS of the movie!The book is trash and complicated with no characters from the movie but the movie is definitely a keeper!

Above-Average TV Movie!

[Pol14 · 4 May 2000]

* * * Contains SPOILER! * * *





I am NOT a fan of TV movies. They're usually boring, about teenage pregnancy, or a lot like soap operas. But "Nightmare Street" is different.

To be honest, I almost didn't watch it because of the name (it sounded like a cheap, lame horror flick), but I'm so glad I did! It had me hooked from beginning to end. The story is about a woman who is hit by a car and wakes up in a parallel world in the body of a female murderer who looks like her.

I won't say any more other than "WATCH IT NOW!!!"

Disappointing...

[rossini1868 · 18 December 2004]

*SPOILERS*

I enjoyed watching Sherilyn Fenn in this poorly directed, badly acted movie. A good concept about parallel worlds, clumsily executed. At least, if Fenn's daughter (and not a son) had been the one she killed in the parallel world, it would have made some sense. And why did the little girl she kept seeing recognize her as "Mommy?" And the woman who played her bitchy sister (in the parallel world) seemed as ghostly and pointless as every other character. The whole thing was too typical and convoluted. Overall... disappointing.

Sherilyn Fenn was great.

I am so confused!

[MissJugoslawia · 16 July 2003]

SPOILER!!!! Does anyone know what went on in this movie? I think I missed something majorly here. She woke up and was Sarah Randolph and then just went home with the sister? But then what was with the end when she got hit by the truck again? And so the doctor wasn't really a doctor? (I actually missed a couple parts but if you're not into intricate plots, this probably is not a movie for you.)