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That kind of sounds like a strategy to trigger lucid dreaming. I've heard that if you envision a specific thing while falling asleep, like for example the StarCraft menu screen, then it will appear somewhere in your dream. When it does, it's supposed to sort of jostle you into consciousness but not wake you up.
It seems that what this person's friend did with his free will in dream land is nope right out of there. He could have turned that nightmare into something awesome though!
Even if you are aware you are in a dream it can be difficult to control it, at least in my experience. More like I wake up on a roller coaster but I'm not sure if its a fun one or a scary one yet, but I can choose to stay and see how it goes.
My nightmares always turn into semi lucid dreams, it's like "this is so horrible it must be a nightmare" and then I can choose to just nope out of sleeping.
My old man taught me that telling someone one is having a nightmare stops it from coming back. I've found that just saying it out aloud works as well.
I've used it quite a few times throughout my life, never fails. It's supposedly pretty eerie for others though when I just sit up in bed in the middle of the night, proclaim "I'm having a nightmare" and then promptly going back to sleep.