Don't Sleep (2017)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The soundtrack at the end credits. I fell in love with the music, so if nothing else, I'm glad I didn't give up and shut the movie off before it was over. Stacy Earl's "Devil Inside You" was beautifully haunting and was very hard to find online. I found it on the apple store. Anyway, back to the movie itself. I love horror movies and am always looking for new and intriguing ones to watch (but I stay away from realistic gore and serial killer movies on most occasions). That being said, I was mini binging movies today and after finishing "The Haunting" again, and watching "Amityville: The Awakening (which I'd give about 5-6 stars)" for the first time, I decided to check out this one because I enjoy watching Dominic in "Shadowhunters" on Freeform (Very upset it's been cancelled after season 3..sigh Freeform people are idiots). I had some trouble following along with the story as the plot seemed very thin and there were quite a few holes (why did he go after Alex Rocco's character? How did Vince end up in that dungeony thing? Why did Timmy have to die?). Of course, I was busy making jewelry items so I may have missed some details but overall, I just couldn't wrap my mind around what was happening. Some of the dialogue was thin, and the concepts just weren't super feasible, even for a horror movie. I will say, the ending was surprising, but again, I just didn't understand the whole concept. Who were Zach and Shawn in another life? They showed them in a different time, but how did they become evil? So much could have been explored in more backstory, but with a runtime of 141 minutes, there really wasn't a whole lot to expand upon. My favorite part of the movie besides the music at the end was seeing Carey Elwes, which had been a surprise to me when I turned it on. Watch it on demand if you're interested, so you don't pay money for it, and hell, even fast forward to check out the hauntingly beautiful end credit music.

Of all the wacky ideas put forth by this movie, its greatest flaw is that it is insufferably boring. It doesn't even try to be original for much of its run time, relying on every Smalltown, USA hot young couple moving to a new house horror movie cliché so blatantly that every single jump scare is laughable. You see everything coming, and they kill the dog, so that's an immediate strike against this film. The main character guy whose name I completely forgot it was so forgettable was apparently demon possessed or something as a child, and had to rely on extreme therapy from a doctor guy and now he's a supposedly well adjusted adult. Except he's a complete and utter asshole and douchebag, which this seems to be unrelated to his demon problems. drifting drearily along this boring slog, a random demon kid in a hoodie appears and... beats up people. that's literally all he does. He beats up an old man so badly the old man starts freaking out and jibbering incoherently, then commits suicide while angrily defying the demon kid who watches him. Then the main character guy gets beat up by the demon kid. Then a whole lot of basically nothing happens, and the main character guy has an irrational freakout at his old doctor on learning that he still contacts his mother to discuss him and his case. He then also starts arbitrarily harassing his girlfriend and acting needlessly paranoid about... nothing in particular. He's just running around screaming and cursing at nobody and nothing while overly dramatic music tries to tie this to the demon kid who beats people up, or maybe he's being re-haunted by the demon, or maybe he is the demon kid. None of this makes any sense, and by the time we reach the end, they throw in a wacky, screwball-esque twist. At some point early in the movie, completely out of nowhere, they bring up a story about a fisherman who went on Crusade in medieval times, and when he came back, his wife killed herself because she was raped repeatedly. That story suddenly comes back as it's revealed the main character guy was that fisherman crusader, and his girlfriend was the wife who got raped, and apparently she got raped by some manner of demon thing that turned her immortal, and she spent the next millennium either waiting for him to be reborn, or trying to find him after he wandered off or something. Then the movie ends, with its end credits overlaid with some incredibly awful romance pop songs after the movie spent about 95% of its run time being the exact opposite of a romantic movie.

This is truly one of those movies that for me could have been freaking awesome. It went in directions that I often WISH horror movies would go it, but sadly the writing and plot jumps were just too much.I remember telling our daughter when she was younger, as she would relay a story about something happening, she would leave out an obvious trigger of some sort (usually one that didn't put her in the best light in the story) and then she would jump to the next part of the story, and I would stop her and tell her there is no way that she did this, and then the other person did that. There was obviously something that happened in between. Well, this movie was made completely and totally without that logic. So many times there is a line like "As a kid I felt there were two sides, this other me that was capable of such evil" and the other person goes "Oh, that's OK" Like it's just totally normal. Truly this movie could have been so much, but instead it was just what it was, a swing and a miss.

By the end of Don't Sleep I felt bad, the ending was so interesting that I wished that I had enjoyed the film. But I didn't, I simply couldn't.Starring Cary Elwes (Princess Bride, Saw, Top Gun) and Drea De Matteo (Joey, The Sopranos) but both as side characters this supernatural thriller staggers along at a dreadful pace from start to finish.The story a mess, the creation abysmal and yet there was something there something frustratingly beneath the surface but unable to break free.In the hands of a decent writer this could have been something quite watchable but Don't Sleep is far from that in its present form.The Good: Well the ending was certainly interesting Cary Elwes The Bad:Lame/dull leads Dreadful story Things I Learnt From This Movie: I learnt that we had a backup pack of ibuprofen at the back of our cupboard for the headache this 95 minute embarrassment gave me