[yasr_overall_rating]
A group of graduate students conduct a sleep deprivation study in the ’80s, but something goes terribly wrong with a test subject. After their department is shut down, the team moves forward in secret – only this time on themselves.
Director Phillip Guzman almost made a pretty decent horror film. “Sleep No More” takes place in the 1980s and what Mr. Guzman does get right, is the feel and overall atmosphere of that time. I watched many a horror movie during that decade as I lived through it and this iteration comes much closer to the ambiance of the films from that time than most other movies produced recently which were set back then. The tone, the characters’ clothes, the dialogue spoken, Walkmans, VHS machines, Mr. Guzman obviously has a great eye for detail for even the smallest components, it’s just a pity the finished product fell short of this greatness.
As the film begins, we see a young man, obviously sleep-deprived, walking down a school corridor who, it appears, can see something terrifying that nobody else can. After locking himself away in a room, he gouges his own eyes out and we discover that a group of students there were studying the effects of sleep deprivation, and after these events, the school shuts the project down. With college finished for the summer, the students secretly decide to start the project up again, using themselves as their own guinea pigs.
The students strongly believe that if a person can stay awake for more than 200 hours, they will pass the point of needing sleep altogether and will be able to function on a whole different level, utilizing parts of the brain never before accessible. As the days drag on, each participant records themselves privately in a room, talking about what they’re feeling, the effects of not sleeping, anything they feel might assist in the overall experiment but gradually, each of them begin experiencing strange phenomenon, ghostlike figures appearing in front of their eyes. The longer they go without sleep, the worse the apparitions become until they come to a realization that these “beings,” have always been around us, feeding off our dreams while we sleep and now that they are not sleeping, they are coming for them.
One by one, they each succumb to drastic measures, self-immolation, uncontrollable hysteria, murderous tendencies, until only two of them are left. When they try to induce sleep by injecting themselves with a surgical anesthetic, the desired result is not achieved and they ascertain that in order to try and beat these phantoms, once and for all, they will have to resort to extreme methods, before it’s too late.
I have to give kudos to writer Jason Murphy for successfully managing to concoct a believable story and instead of infusing it with the typical boogeyman, ala Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers, created fictional beings that, according to the story, have always surrounded us and, unbeknownst to us, fed off of our dreams. I think with a bigger budget, this movie could have given “A Nightmare on Elm Street” a run for its money for its intriguing, creative narrative, and supernatural antagonists. While it might have worked on paper, sadly, its visual representation on film, does not.
Available on DVD, VOD & Digital October 2nd
