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Sleepwalker, 2017
Sarah (Ahna O'Reilly) has returned to graduate school after the tragic suicide of her husband. But Sarah soon finds herself experiencing a range of sleep issues, including sleepwalking and recurring nightmares. Seeking help from a sleep clinic overseen by Dr. White (Richard Armitage), Sarah's world begins to take several surreal turns and she starts to question her own sanity.
This film is a textbook mediocre thriller-horror, with a handful of nice touches.
On the good side, some of the nightmare sequences (including one in which Sarah is trapped in some sort of . . . cling wrap spider web??) are atmospheric. I really enjoyed Izabella Scorupco in a secondary role as a psychiatrist who initially refers Sarah to the sleep clinic and who reappears in a few sequences. Overall the film is mildly plagued by characters who we are meant to find suspicious, and her character seems refreshingly straight-forward on this front. She's also written pretty well, and as a mental health professional many of the things she says and does feel real.
Not so much the character of Dr White, who is the kind of movie doctor who doesn't really think that hard about whether or not it's appropriate to sleep with a patient. He belongs to the group of characters in the film who are meant to be ambiguous, and overall the dynamic between him and Sarah just didn't work for me. It's an awkward mix of thrills and romance, and neither are all that convincing.
Plot-wise, this is one of those films where weird stuff happens for 90 minutes, then it's all explained at the end. And once it's explained . . . eh. Certain things that happened earlier in the film just didn't totally make sense with what we learn. Neither Sarah's character arc nor her relationship with Dr White go anywhere all that interesting. Armitage, who I have liked in plenty of other films, doesn't do much more than offer up bland charisma. O'Reilly is good in her role, but the writing constantly just calls for her to be confused and upset. The film ends on a note that is meant to be upsetting, and it is, but it isn't the good kind of upsetting.
Skippable, but not awful.
Sleepwalker, 2017
Sarah (Ahna O'Reilly) has returned to graduate school after the tragic suicide of her husband. But Sarah soon finds herself experiencing a range of sleep issues, including sleepwalking and recurring nightmares. Seeking help from a sleep clinic overseen by Dr. White (Richard Armitage), Sarah's world begins to take several surreal turns and she starts to question her own sanity.
This film is a textbook mediocre thriller-horror, with a handful of nice touches.
On the good side, some of the nightmare sequences (including one in which Sarah is trapped in some sort of . . . cling wrap spider web??) are atmospheric. I really enjoyed Izabella Scorupco in a secondary role as a psychiatrist who initially refers Sarah to the sleep clinic and who reappears in a few sequences. Overall the film is mildly plagued by characters who we are meant to find suspicious, and her character seems refreshingly straight-forward on this front. She's also written pretty well, and as a mental health professional many of the things she says and does feel real.
Not so much the character of Dr White, who is the kind of movie doctor who doesn't really think that hard about whether or not it's appropriate to sleep with a patient. He belongs to the group of characters in the film who are meant to be ambiguous, and overall the dynamic between him and Sarah just didn't work for me. It's an awkward mix of thrills and romance, and neither are all that convincing.
Plot-wise, this is one of those films where weird stuff happens for 90 minutes, then it's all explained at the end. And once it's explained . . . eh. Certain things that happened earlier in the film just didn't totally make sense with what we learn. Neither Sarah's character arc nor her relationship with Dr White go anywhere all that interesting. Armitage, who I have liked in plenty of other films, doesn't do much more than offer up bland charisma. O'Reilly is good in her role, but the writing constantly just calls for her to be confused and upset. The film ends on a note that is meant to be upsetting, and it is, but it isn't the good kind of upsetting.
Skippable, but not awful.