There are plenty of underrated horror shows that deserve your attention, but few are as overlooked as “Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams.” This sci-fi horror anthology series doesn’t get much love, likely due to its Indonesian provenance, but it’s absolutely worthy of it.
Writer/director Joko Anwar’s decades-spanning series follows everyday people as they encounter otherworldly problems, recalling the Indonesian multi-hyphenate’s work in film. He made his directorial debut in 2005 with the romantic comedy Joni’s Promise (Janji Joni), before becoming one of the most important figures in Indonesian horror. In 2018, he released what /Film dubbed the scariest film of that year in “Satan’s Slaves,” a loose remake of the 1980 film of the same name. He followed that up with 2022’s “Satan’s Slaves: Communion,” a compelling sequel that applied haunted house tropes to an apartment complex. He also oversaw the 2019 Indonesian superhero movie “Gundala” and the 2024 horror “Grave Torture,” which received 17 nominations at the 2024 Indonesian Film Festival — the most of any film that year.
Put simply, Anwar’s horror and fantasy bonafides are not in question, which is why it’s no surprise that “Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams” is a quality series that delivers on its promise of effective horror, mystery, and sci-fi scares. The show comprises seven interconnected Jakarta-set stories, four of which were written by Anwar himself, who also directed two installments. Anwar also co-wrote the finale with Rafki Hidayat. With the show hailing from Indonesia and set entirely there, it didn’t enjoy the same reception as “Black Mirror.” But if you ask fans of the series, and even several critics, it absolutely should have.
Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams is an interconnected sci-fi horror series
Joko Anwar’s “Satan’s Slaves” and “Impetigore” proved that the next great horror movies were going to come from Indonesia. But with “Nightmares and Daydreams,” Anwar expanded his influence into TV, and while the show doesn’t have the same impact as his films, it’s arguably just as good as his best big screen horror efforts.
Featuring a large ensemble cast, the show is the result of the titular creator’s “curiosity and fascination with alien stories,” as he put it to Tudum. “I dug deep into the intriguing concept of aliens that might not be far from us,” Anwar told the outlet, adding, “I wanted to create something that most Indonesian viewers can relate to. So although it’s sci-fi supernatural, you’ll see some social and political themes brought up.”
Sounds like a winning formula, especially since it’s exactly how Rod Serling approached what remains the best anthology series of all time, “The Twilight Zone.” It’s also what propels the aforementioned “Black Mirror.” Unlike those shows, however, this pseudo-anthology series actually tells one big story through seemingly separate narratives that coalesce in the finale.
Across the series’ seven episodes, we follow a taxi driver who puts his mother into a cursed nursing home, a poverty-stricken couple who adopt an orphan only to discover he’s not all he seems, and a novelist whose life starts to resemble her own character’s. There’s a community of fishermen on the verge of eviction, a man who learns hypnosis only to be forced to face the consequences of his hypnotism, and a diamond appraiser whose search for her missing sister leads her directly into peril. Every story boasts top-notch production values, strong performances, and effective scares. It deserves more attention.
Fans of Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams are loving the show
Unlike “The Twilight Zone,” its follow-up “Night Gallery,” or the 1970s supernatural horror series that once hosted Jodie Foster, “Ghost Story,” “Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams” doesn’t use the classic technique of a narrator to introduce each segment. Instead, each episode of the series merely plays out à la a “Black Mirror” episode. Unlike Charlie Brooker’s show, however, the stories eventually intertwine to reveal a surprisingly sweeping overarching narrative that spans multiple decades.
That seems to have gone down well with both fans and critics. Reddit is full of praise for “Nightmares and Daydreams,” with users complimenting the show for being “beautifully made” and “clever, compelling, and creepy.” Others compared it favorably to the wickedly fun creep show “Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities,” and one Redditor even wrote, “each episode is better than the one before it.”
Meanwhile, “Nightmares and Daydreams” has racked up an 88% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, though that’s based on just eight reviews, none of which are from “top critics.” Still, those that did review the series were very complimentary, with Paul Lê of Bloody Disgusting describing the show overall as “a mighty journey into the headspace of Indonesia’s most innovative filmmaker.” The South China Morning Post’s James Marsh found Anwar’s ability to “interweav[e] elements of horror and science fiction with more grounded stories about [Indonesia’s] chequered past and enduring economic disparities” to be an effective formula that produced something “significantly more than the sum of its parts.”
Clearly, then, “Nightmares and Daydreams” is at least worth checking out, if not one of the most criminally overlooked series on Netflix. You can fix that right now by heading over to the streamer, where all seven episodes are available worldwide.
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