The Shadowman’s Nightmare is a virtual puzzle box of sorts; a hybrid film and Augmented Reality Game that unravels in the hands of the player. It’s the latest creative project from Mark Bonanno of Aunty Donna and Grouse House, with its sprawling transmedia nature designed to corral audiences into a spiral of fascination.
The titular Shadowman, as posited, is a creature of layers.
He’s the creation of fictional 1990s actor Ken Holden, who once appeared in a cult television show. In an effort to revive his star, Holden self-funded and released an expansion tape for the popular Australian video game known as Nightmare – also called Atmosfear – and while it was once thought lost to time, it has now resurfaced in the form of The Shadowman’s Nightmare.
The film is a dark and surreal experience, styled after the player-driven gameplay of Atmosfear, with Bonanno as the cackling, terrifying, and wide-eyed Shadowman – returning from a run in Hug the Sun – demanding interaction and engagement from players who should rightly be terrified.
And for those struck by this magnificent beast, there is more to discover in the secret, discoverable Shadowman website, which is partially inspired by the puzzles of Blue Prince, and the long-forgotten but cult favourite Donnie Darko website (which can still be played using the Ruffle emulator).
‘If you unlock all the puzzles, it gives the film meaning and context,’ Bonanno tells ScreenHub. ‘It helps you understand certain elements of the film that are very purposefully ambiguous within the film, because I wanted to explore the narrative of it outside the film.’
The Shadowman’s Nightmare interview – quick links
The influence of Atmosfear on a generation of young kids
As shared by Bonanno, Atmosfear was one of the core inspirations for this hybrid project.
In its era, this was a groundbreaking Australian-made project – an interactive board game that paired with a video, CD-ROM, or DVD for a hybrid experience where players could face their ‘greatest fear’ directly by interacting with dynamic prompts on video.
‘It just always stuck with me,’ Bonanno says. ‘I don’t know why on earth my Sicilian immigrant parents bought that for their children. It just doesn’t seem to align. But I think they had an incredible advertising campaign.’
‘I remember the biggest memory that I have of it was never being able to get to the end, because it would get so scary that I would abandon my run, and run behind a couch until the tape was over. I just let my brother and my cousins finish playing it.’
Creating The Shadowman’s Nightmare was a way to confront his fears, and to dive into what made the experience work best. Bonanno believes Atmosfear was so popular in its era because it was a rare form of media that took its kid audience seriously and allowed them to explore more adult, confronting themes in a way that offered trust and maturity.
‘I loved the [The Gatekeeper’s] voice, and I loved how he would call you maggots,’ Bonanno says. ‘It felt like [the game] didn’t pull its punches. It was made for kids, but it was comfortable being a little rude, toeing the line between what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate.’
‘I love that it treated me like an adult in some ways by speaking to me like that.’
As Bonanno tells ScreenHub, the game was an influential experience for him and his future comedy. It also inspired a continued love for dark fantasy, and how it may entrance an audience.
‘Dark fantasy is very appealing to me, because again, it kind of teeters on that line of appropriate and inappropriate – there’s stuff like Labyrinth, which is intended for a younger audience thematically, that doesn’t shy away from adult ideas, because it doesn’t treat children as stupid.
Bonanno also points to the films of Pixar for similar examples, with many of their projects from the 1990s and 2000s being, ‘stuff that was intended for children, but they don’t hold back on the emotion, and the way the characters have depth, and wants, and feelings, and immediacy. That’s what makes those stories everlasting for me.’
While he admits The Shadowman’s Nightmare ‘has not one ounce of that … not one f*cking sprinkle,’ he believes his experience with these films remains influential to his comedy work, and what inspires him to continually explore realms of fantasy in his creations.
The genre allows for a real separation of reality, to explore deep and confronting themes for those of all ages, in a way that is palatable and understandable.
Gamifying comedy for an unseen audience
One of the biggest challenges facing Bonanno in exploring these themes was integrating a needed interactivity into The Shadowman’s Nightmare, to ensure its fantasy-comedy was audience-focussed, and allowed for some degree of active participation.
While this is subject matter he also explored with the wider Aunty Donna team in their Black Mirror parody Bandersketch!, these two projects were entirely separate – as inspired more by the Choose Your Own Adventure books – and each required a fresh approach.
‘Writing it was so hard,’ Bonanno says.
‘Writing The Shadowman’s Nightmare was so hard because it was constantly trying to find a balance between making this funny for an audience – because it’s not super watchable as a film … The first draft of it was way too game-y.
‘So then I injected a lot more comedic ideas into it, then I’d pushed it too far, then I had to bring it back a little bit. It was a very difficult balance to strike, because I was trying to make something that’s at least a bit watchable, but also very interactive and playable, like the original board game.’
The Shadowman’s Nightmare is a project that demands an audience, and remains incomplete without it.
During the Brunswick Underground Film Festival, Bonanno and the Grouse House team screened the project with people playing the game. Bonanno says it was a gratifying experience to see it screen in its ‘complete’ form, with audience participation and reception being such an important part of the experience.
‘It was so reassuring because I’d just spent so long in a room on my own making this thing, because I did pretty much all the post-production myself, and that’s including all the VHS transfer – which is all authentic, there’s no digital VHS assets used.’
‘Just to hear people laughing, and to hear – some of the stuff that’s in there, that’s quote purposefully a bit uncomfortable visually – hearing that kind of visceral reaction was incredible.’
The Shadowman’s Nightmare, as Bonanno describes it, intentionally dances away from attempts at description. It’s a tape with a real strangeness and surreality to its design, with its acted segments charting strange and uncanny scenes, including an inter-dimensional pregnancy, and the appearance of a universal opposite to The Shadowman.
It’s a strangeness that is so compelling for the emotion it evokes – its oddness, its disgust, and its commitment to a rather odd bit.
‘The response, mainly, is “I can’t believe this got made, and I’m glad it did” which is funny, because it’s just that I spent a lot of money on it. God, the things you can do.’
The art and creation of the Shadowman’s Nightmare website
In developing the world and lore of The Shadowman, Bonanno leant even further into his inspirations for the creation of a companion website.
As he tells ScreenHub, it’s designed as a hybrid ARG taking cues from the iconic Donnie Darko website co-created by film director Richard Kelly and Hi-ReS! in 2001 to promote this film and expand its lore.
While semi-broken by the discontinuation of Adobe Flash Player in 2020, the website has since been salvaged by passionate fans, who continue to explore its many pages, fascinated by its creation and delivery, and what more can be learned about the film through its exploration and delivery of paraphernalia.
‘I would spend weekends with my cousin in high school just on that thing, just trying to solve it, and getting pages from the [in-film textbook] The Philosophy of Time Travel,’ Bonanno says. ‘I felt what was so cool about it … [it was an] experience of working to figure out what the narrative of the film was.’
The Shadowman’s Nightmare website – which can be found by those wily enough to spot the URL during the film, as an intentional surprise – shares plenty of similar stylish flourishes to the Donnie Darko website, even emulating its 1990s-era design, and its sense of discovery.
As you explore various pages, you’ll learn more abut The Shadowman’s creation, and his intentionally – his playful rudeness, his mystery, and his supernatural nature. It’s all about the thrill of the chase, and uncovering new clues with each new foray.
Another major inspiration for this clue-based hunt was Dogubomb’s Blue Prince, a highly-acclaimed video game where players are sent into mysterious, ever-expanding chambers to solve an array of puzzles, all leading to a central, solvable mystery.
‘I love that the game was like, “f*ck you, I’m giving you nothing.’ Like, you need a notebook, or you can’t get past this puzzle,’ Bonanno says.
It’s all up to the player, analysing the bare clues presented – including some easily-missed and more obvious hints – to crack open the website, and find everything hiding inside.
Inviting audiences to discover the secrets of The Shadowman
‘I’ve had a couple of crises about it, at times,’ Bonanno admits, on the creation of The Shadowman’s Nightmare.
‘I went so hard on trying to focus on the authentic nature, and kept returning to the original idea, of it having to be a one hour playable Nightmare tape, and needed to keep reminding myself that that does limit the reach and scope of its audience.’
‘Part of me went up and down about, you know, maybe I should’ve done a cut that was more digestible, that I could’ve entered into more festivals. I just kept coming back to “nah, just do the thing that you want to do”. Because if you do that at its absolute, without compromise, then maybe, hopefully, the audience that appreciates that will find it.’
‘That’s really all I want. If there’s an audience out there that appreciates this kind of stuff, that they’re able to find it, and that they can have a bit of fun.’
As Bonanno tells ScreenHub, The Shadowman’s Nightmare won’t be for everyone, and that’s the point of its expression. It’s a vast, wild, and ultra-weird creation, and one that’s designed for a niche audience, likely to give it the time and passion it warrants.
It’s a future cult hit, and one that will hopefully live on through its unique multi-modal delivery.
