By: JWBM
Sleep: the true reset feature us humans have to maintain our health and carry on to the next day without seeing pesky hallucinations or losing our minds to a maze of utter confusion. A chain of events leads to a husband being killed in his own bed. The wife—a little raving mad at the moment—appears to be the primary suspect. A criminal psychologist is called in to investigate the wife's mental state and motivations, but ends up getting more than she signed up for on her first murder case.
What's interesting over your typical one-body-down-another-to-go horror film is the story here gives a human connection between the characters. The desperate circumstances, and then the growing number of deaths, begin to affect the psychologist—Kate, played by Olga Kurylenko. To make matters worse, she's becoming afflicted by an unexplainable, helpless frozen state as she looks on to a horrific creature that gets closer and closer. The concept in itself is both creepy and curious. The film lays it all out in the open as a carefully crafted formula—elevated stages that get increasingly more dangerous and all. That makes it predictable to what happens next, though for anyone who has had sleep paralysis happen to them, it still comes with a sense of dread and loss of control once played out.
The manipulation of volume here will get you to jump no doubt. Though it's the point of being frustrating at times in how low the normal sound effects are or how the characters talk, then BAM there goes your ear drums and a knock from the neighbors. The direction has a tendency to go from dragging its knuckles to white-knuckle intense in a split second. In some respects it gives this a certain energy after a slower scene from the raw emotions and helter-skelter action, though in others it makes it over-the-top in a not-so-believable way that jars you out of it. For instance, a character at a group for sleep paralysis sufferers starts spouting off like a cartoonish superstitious peasant that's all fear and no sense. I get that it's a tough nut to crack for a performer, though it doesn't always translate well on screen. On the other hand, Craig Conway—as Dougie—strikes a certain balance between a sense to survive and a fearful, sleep-deprived mind that goes in and out of rationality. He gives the character a certain on screen presense and a driving point to accelerate the events.
Rating: 5.5/10
Director: Clive Tonge
Actors: Olga Kurylenko, Craig Conway, Javier Botet
Info: IMDB link
Trailer: YouTube link
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