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Calvin Morie McCarthy is an all-in-one writer-director-cinematographer who was behind An Amityville Poltergeist, but morbidly speaking, the film had catchy titles of No Sleep and Don’t Sleep prior to the release of this money grab title. This writer seems focused on horrors associated with sleeping because this film, its shameless title and all, is a follow-up to a slew of movies about the myths and realities of sleep paralysis and its les urban neuroses. In the more unsettling concepts surrounding the documentary The Nightmare is that someone suffering from SP coupled with a vivid imagination and a dark figure’s shadow could manipulate people around him. And coincidently, that SP documentary has stimulated an avalanche of fictional films such as Mara, Slumber, The Harbinger, and many others focused on the same premise. And so, here we have yet another repackaged telling of the same horror story.
Considering the nature of the title, it seems odd that McCarthy’s narrative model includes the ‘The Haunting’ book. Heroine Wanda Fulcia, played by Victoria Grace Borrello, gets into an arguement with her brother and sister in law whome she is currently staying with after a divorce. This is actually similar to the argument Eleanor has with her sister in the book. This particular character drives a car and goes off to help out in a pseudo scientific volunteer experiment.
Dr Richard Preatorius, Steve Larkin, was supposedly researching sleep paralysis in a disused school setting which allows for us to be introduced to a myriad of other characters. One of these characters is Theo but unlike his female counterpart in the book, he is played by the guy Tim Coyle. Margo (Jax Kellington) is also a character and serves the same role as “Theo” but instead of being a tattooed and sexy lesbian, is actually the opposite.
Everyone gets a little too comfortable around Dr. P, which raises some eyebrows as Wanda Campbell observes, ‘I don’t have sleep paralysis,’ to which Dr. P responds, unsatisfyingly, ‘that’s okay. I can put all of you under hypnosis and create the condition.’ Of course, such a statement exhibits a monumental lack of judgment. After some incoherent background chatter, it is revealed someone has been obsessively stalking a character who goes by the name of Night Mare Hag. She goes by Chynna Rae Schurts and while she does leave some people with disquieting, albeit comical impressions, she is also sometimes genuinely frightening. The usual plot devices of missing phones or car keys to imprison everyone into false imprisonment is also present, and although it does lead to reasonable escalation, the climax is incredibly predictable. It reminds me of An Amityville Poltergeist – a lopsided film which had one genuinely disturbing idea when Ms. Colton shrieked in agony in the bathtub the conjuring the beyond tries too hard to inject humor into classic horror and although he does use some unusual casting, Larkin is as British as Richard Johnson, but a bear-like rugby player who plays a scientist is bizarrely perfect for the role. As much as it tries to make range from the ‘genuinely creepy’ and ‘occasionally striking sparks,’ it fails.
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