A bit of an update on your boy! After floating around the station as a flex producer, and then filling in on the 3:00 PM show for months, I finally have a home. After Scripps did a big shakeup, I'm now producing the 4:00 PM show. The show has its ups and downs but it's nice to be able to know what I'm doing officially instead of the uncertainty. I'm a guy who can live in my head so knowing the ground beneath me is sturdy is a pretty big relief. So where was I? Oh yeah, horror! Tonight let's discuss...
Slumber (2017)
Maggie Q is a sleep doctor who saw her brother die in a sleepwalking incident when they were just kids. It's a trauma she never really got over and it comes right back in her face when a family brings in a young child with sleep paralysis. But it's not only the child being affected. The entire family sleepwalks and each night the boy gets worse and the mom, dad and sister get increasingly more dangerous while they're sleeping and moving around.
This movie is similar to Mara. Both stories deal with sleep paralysis and a demon trying to suck the life force out of people. This movie came out a year before but I saw Mara first and unfortunately for Slumber, Marai was better and that took a bit of the punch away from this one. I also thought that Mara was scarier. But that's mainly because the demon was played by Javier Botet and that guy should be in all the horror movies. All of them.
It kind of surprises me that there aren't more movies involving sleep paralysis. I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but it's terrifying. I'm not going to use the medical explanation because it's a lot drier, but basically, it's when you wake up from a dream but your body isn't ready. You're aware but you can't move and it's hard to breathe and can involve hallucinations. I have had that happen to me once in my life; I opened my eyes and the devil was sitting on my chest. It was horrifying.
I didn't have high hopes for this movie. It was late when I started looking for something to watch and even later by the time I decided on one. I only picked it because I saw Maggie Q was in it and I like her a lot. As for the cast, the family is pretty good. The way they look fits their characters perfectly. They have been through Hell and they wear it all over their faces. They've done everything that they can to help their son but nothing's working. Each day they wake up and they just look worse and worse and by the end, they look like they could sleep for days.
The ending was also something I didn't quite expect. It's a British horror movie so I pretty much expected an unhappy ending but they made it ambiguous about what really happened here. I don't want to give it away but it seems like they were maybe hoping for a sequel, but I don't see that happening.
It's not the best movie, but it's not too bad either. It had potential and had some scary moments. The monster is pretty cool but the reveal doesn't do it justice. I was going to say that it's inoffensive. You won't be disappointed if you watch it but you will probably never watch it again. But then I remembered that they killed the dog. And as you know, that means fuck this movie.
4 Dr. Chainsaws!
