Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams is a 7-episode series exploring the supernatural origins of the world. The series is streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Episode 1: Old House
Panji is a simple taxi driver with a wife and infant son. He takes care of his 71-year-old mother who is slowly losing her memory.
Panji ferries a nurse to an old age nursing home for rich people every day, but when he asks her about it, she says that no one deserves to be there.
Another nurse asks him about his mother and says that maybe they can offer him a deal to have her admitted.
Panji and his wife do not want to admit his mother, but they have no choice when she wanders off with their son and forgets where she put him.
Panji drops her off despite holding back in his tears because of his cruel decision. That night he has a nightmare and changes his mind.
He rushes to the home and sees a group of young people there. The nurse tells him that they are the children of the residents, but doesn’t let him see his mother.
He sneaks back in and sees one of the men put on a light-up robe and walk into a secret basement.
He sees the robed figures gather in front of two horrifying creatures. An old woman is placed in front of one and her son is placed in front of the other.
Then the creatures transfer the son’s life force into his mother and she is given a second chance.
He learns that everyone there has stolen the life force of their children, before getting caught.
They prepare to transfer his life force to his mother but she fights back, giving him a chance to burn the place down and escape.
A mysterious hand rises from the burnt remains meaning one person survived.
Episode 2: The Orphan
Iyos and Ipah scavenge the way through life till Iyos hears about a child at the adoption agency that makes a person rich in seven days.
Iyos wants to adopt the child so that he can buy his dream house and get out of their difficult life.
Ipah reminds him that people always die on the 8th day but he says that he plans on killing the child first.
They adopt Syafin and start finding small gold pieces and cash around the house for the first few days.
Ipah gets attached to Syafin but Iyos tells her not to because he’s not their son. They had a son named Rian but he died while Ipah was scavenging one day.
After a few good days, the 6th day turns out to be difficult and Iyos takes his frustration out on Syafin.
Ipah protects the child and wishes he would stay. She doesn’t care as much about the money.
The next day, Syafin goes out looking for his toy and is about to come under a landslide when Iyos and Ipah rush to save him.
They all get engulfed but when they wake up, they are in a big mansion. Ipah doesn’t trust Iyos but he apologizes to Syafin and gets him a gift.
Iyos finds a huge bag of cash in his house and decides to bury Syafin alive that night. He ties the boy up and digs a huge hole.
Ipah escapes and runs away with Syafin to their old hut with Iyos chasing after him. He tries to take Syafin away but Ipah kills him.
Syafin cries as Ipah holds the knife and then kills herself because that is what always happens. Syafin rushes to her and holds his hands over her wound.
A bright light emerges and a scream is heard.
Episode 3: Poems and Pain
Rania is an author whose second novel just released to little fanfare. Everyone is obsessed with her first novel ‘Poems and Pain’ but she doesn’t want to write a sequel.
When she wrote the first book, strange things happened to her and she didn’t want to relive it.
The novel was about a woman who found herself in an abusive relationship and Rania would not remember writing the pages.
However, she would feel the same pain that her lead character Laras felt. She ended the book because the pain was too much.
Now she is forced to write a sequel to make money but this time the marks of abuse show up on her body to.
She asks her publisher Hendra to observe her while she is writing and he sees her go into a trance. Rania looks through Laras’ eyes and realizes that what she’s writing is really happening.
Laras lives in a basement with her daughter Asti and is regularly abused by her husband. The beatings get serious and Hendra asks Rania to stop but she doesn’t.
She is determined to save Laras and for that she must find out who she is. The next time she is in Laras’ mind, she asks her to look into a mirror.
Rania sees her own face and visits her parents to find out more. They admit that she has a twin sister and they were both adopted by other families when they were young.
They changed their minds and went back for Rania but they weren’t able to find Laras. Rania goes into Laras’ mind once more and convinces her sister to fight back.
She discovers where Laras’ husband Adrian lives and rushes there with Hendra. She arrives to find Laras dying from a head wound so she takes Asti and goes away.
Rania assumes that Adrian will be exposed but when she goes there the next day, the police say they found no evidence and the basement has disappeared.
She promises to give Adrian whatever he deserves no matter what he is.
Episode 4: Encounter
Wahyu lives in a village near the coast along with several others who are scraping through life collecting shellfish.
He is working extra to save up money and travel to Saudi Arabia and find his mother who left when he was a child.
His wife Dijah isn’t too interested in going with him and another villager named Rusman calls him selfish for working harder than the others.
The village is being pressured by outsiders to vacate that space so that developers can build an apartment complex there.
Wahyu has saved almost enough and goes out during a storm to collect more shellfish when he sees a divine figure of white light in the sky.
His wife gave him a camera that she won at the factory earlier and he uses that to click a picture of the “angel”.
He rushes back and shows everyone the picture of what he saw. Everyone except Rusman is convinced that Wahyu is a chosen prophet and looks to him for guidance.
People begin gossiping about Wahyu and someone mentions that he might get the power to read people’s minds.
A reporter is writing an article about the villagers being forced to move and he tells them that they have no real standing in the situation.
They tell him that Wahyu is chosen and show him the photo. Rusman still refuses to believe that Wahyu is special and is more focused on fighting for his home.
Wahyu’s wife is having an affair with someone else and is worried that she might be exposed through his mind reading.
She steals the money he saved and runs away with the other man. Rusman is threatened for standing up and told to cough up a huge sum for a chance to live.
The reporter offers Wahyu lots of money for the photograph so that they can publish it and he agrees because he is too heartbroken about his wife.
Rusman tries to forcefully take the photo so that he can have the money for himself. Wahyu hides the picture in a stove and it is destroyed.
Rusman tears up Wahyu’s one picture of his mother in frustration and leaves to join the other villagers who discover that they are being attacked by soldiers.
During this, Wahyu is in his hut when it is transported to a different realm. An angel appears before him to give him enlightenment and sends him back.
He steps out and gets in between the villagers and soldiers to stop them. He is floating in the air the next moment and everyone bows down to the chosen one.
Episode 5: The Other Side
Bandi and Dewi live in an abandoned building with their son Marhan after Bandi lost his job at the theatre that shut down.
Bandi used to tear the ticket subs of moviegoers and met Dewi there. Dewi came from a well-off family who didn’t want her to spend her life with a poor man like Bandi.
She loved him and refused to listen to her family. Bandi goes out to buy medicines for Dewi and comes across the old theatre where he worked.
It is run down from the outside but it is completely pristine and functioning on the inside. He sees his old boss Mr. Domi, and the actor Rama Pamungkas and talks to them.
He leaves after remembering what he went out for but when he gets home, Dewi and Marhan are shocked to see him.
They say that it has been two years since he left but he believes it was only a few hours. Dewi believes him and Marhan asks him not to leave them again.
During dinner, Bandi leaves to buy a cigarette and comes across the theatre again. He meets Domi again who tells him that he should stay because life is easier there.
He stays for a while, but once again remembers his family and leaves. He finds out that it has been 3 years and Dewi has remarried someone else.
Bandi doesn’t see it but he is completely disheveled and dirtier each time he returns. He realizes that Domi was probably right and goes back to the theatre to live out his life.
Dewi later sees a segment about homeless people on the news and Bandi is in the footage. She is determined to find him and goes to her old house to get a sense of where he might be.
She reaches out to his mind and finds out where he is. She finds him in the middle of the jungle with many other catatonic people.
A strange creature seems to feeding on them with sound waves while they live out their dreams, and Dewi stabs the creature.
Bandi thinks about going back to his wife but Domi insists that it would be better for all that he stayed.
Dewi holds on to her husband as his mind is lost forever.
Episode 6: Hypnotized
Ali is an electronics technician who struggles to get a job because of his color blindness. He lives with his wife Ningsih and children Hendra and Ayu.
His neighbor Iwan is a hypnotist who fleeces people out of their money and he tells Ali to join him if he wants to support his family.
Ali has good morals and tries to instill them in his family which is why he refuses Iwan’s offer.
Unfortunately, the need for funds to manage their daily lives pushes Ali to do something he doesn’t want to.
Iwan taught Ali how to hypnotize someone and Ali used the trick to hypnotize Mrs. Dewi while she was at the ATM.
He runs away with some of her money but after returning home he starts to see strange things.
The televisions at his house switch on without any intimation and play a spiraling design on them.
The next day, Ali’s family begins to show no signs of morality as they begin picking fights and stealing.
Ali tries to speak some sense into them but it doesn’t seem to matter. He continues to see the spirals on the TV as well as Mrs. Dewi’s face.
She tells him that he will pay for his mistake and he apologizes profusely so that his family doesn’t get hurt.
Dewi continues to haunt his nightmares and tells him that he can get out of her hypnotism just by taking control and owning up to his mistake.
He focuses more on getting out of the hypnotic state and hears the voices of his family as he is about to walk off a building rooftop.
He stops himself and meets Dewi at the rooftop. She tells him that he has passed her test and is being recruited to an organization that is meant to save the world.
Episode 7: P.O. BOX
Valdya is an exceptional diamond appraiser who is often called into the customs office to appraise passengers’ jewelry.
During one such visit, she meets a strange woman who says that their paths will cross again.
Valdya is dating Mikael, a customs officer who was dating her older sister Dara before she disappeared.
It has been five years since her disappearance and Valdya had given up trying to find her until she finds a USB with some of Dara’s files.
She finds out that Dara applied to an employment ad in the newspaper and was asked to send her information to P.O. Box 888.
Dara begins to investigate the box and check the paper every day in case the ad appeared again.
She meets a woman who says that her husband answered the same ad and came home with a hole in his head claiming that someone was trying to kill him.
They tell Valdya to drop it but she is determined to find out what happened to her sister. She finds the ad again and applies for the job.
She stakes out the box and sneaks onto the car of the men collecting the mail back to their base.
Valdya’s application is accepted and she is sent to the same location she is currently at. She gets onto the elevator with other people who are also accepted.
They realize that each of them is an expert in their field and has a prized body part attributed to that profession.
A gas is let out and they all fall unconscious in the lift. When Valdya wakes up, she is tied to a chair with the other people in front of a long table.
A woman resembling the strange creature sits at the center with Adrian to one side. They are eating the body parts of the individuals, and Dara calls them cannibals.
She asks about her sister and they remember the time they killed her. She is about to be killed when Wahyu storms into the room with Panji, Rania, Dewi, Ali, and the woman who saw Valdya earlier.
They save her and fight off the creatures pretending to be humans. Wahyu then explains that the creatures are from Agartha, a realm within Earth.
They are the Antibodies that set out to save Earth from the Agarthans who want to take over Earth. They ask Valdya to join them and she accepts.
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