Sadly what stays with you after this movie is the infuriatingly shitty ending. How can you make something that has such an original and intriguing visual style, with a novel idea on a topic that has been done a lot, and then just completely shit on it with the most overused cliché trope in fiction history used in the most lazy and unimaginative way possible ! A text message saying "You're in a coma, please wake up!" ? COME ON ! What the fuck is wrong with you ?
Anyway, if you scrape these last 30 seconds, it is pretty good though.
A young girl that doesn't seem to want to come home when her mother is there, she's sleeping outdoors, that seems to have been going on for a while, so when she find an ad for a sleep study, that would both allow her to sleep in a comfortable place and be paid, she jumps on it. It's never said why she's not coming home (maybe a representation of the coma then ?) but she's going to class, so it wouldn't be that hard for her mother to find her if she wanted to.
There are other people in the sleep study, we'll pass on the fact that everything is mostly centred on her only because the guy in charge of the study wants to fuck her and starts stalking her.
What the study does, is visualize people's dreams. So here's the first good point of the movie: the dream sequences. When viewed in their ridiculously low tech control room on tiny screens barely bigger than phones (really, when you first see the control room it's really wtf is that ? Couldn't they have at least real screens ?), not much, but we also get immersed in them. They're black and white, foggy, creepy and of course weird. Visually really interesting. Two small things though; they're only linear, it's always a tunnel progression forward, like a 80s first person dungeon RPG, and they sometimes have sound, which was weird as the machine to visualize them doesn't.
Then comes the original idea and theme of the study: there is a phase of sleep where everybody's dream end the same way; with a terrifying human shadow with glowing eyes lurks next to you, and then a even worse next one where people open their eyes, while still asleep, and see the actual room they are in, with the same shadow lurking next to their bed. The point of the study seems to be to show that is a general phenomenon for everybody. A small issue here, if that was the case, you wouldn't need to be able to actually see what people dream of to at least see that there is this weird pattern. Would have been much better, realistic and scarier, if the phase was not visible from the outside. Maybe less impressive on the screen, but psychologically more impactful. You can't have people people opening their eyes and shaking in terror in their bed while their vitals go crazy and pretend that's the way everybody sleeps and nobody noticed before. This is really sacrificing the meaningful for the cheap visual effect, the equivalent of a jump scare.
This idea though ! So much potential basically unexplored by the movie. What is this thing ? Is it a single entity or several ? Is it conscious ? Has it always been there ? Does it come from the past or from outside ? What does it want ? Is it creeping into the waking world ? It's always a little sad when some fiction finds a great unexplored idea and doesn't exploit it, but now it's been used and others can't expand on it.
It then gets weirder, Sarah sleepwalks for what seems like hours and miles, leading to (in the dream) a ally full of the creepy shadows and a kind of castle and (in reality) a field where her lost phone is, and it's ringing. Is this part reality ? Or a dream ? And if a dream whose ? You would tend to think "not a dream" because when dreams are shown, they do not look reality like.Yet it is very strange. Nobody is around, except from the nurse and security guard that are also surprised that no one is answering the phone, bringing a bit of reality. However if you didn't catch on it, the alternating shots between the other researcher, in a city full of lights and cars, and Sarah and Jeremy, walking with no one and nothing that moves all around, vividly shows that something is wrong.
After that comes the horror part, where the shadows seem to come in the waking world, hunting them, continuing the blurring between real world and dreams.
And the movie could have stopped there. On the last shot when she's facing the shadow. And it would have been great. With lots of interesting questions.
But she finds herself back at Jeremy's place, seemingly having killed him while they were having sex. She sees herself in the mirror, and she has fangs, like she had in Jeremy's dream.
And the movie could have stopped there. When she realizes she's in a dream, and we wonder when did the dream start. And it would have been great. With lots of interesting questions.
But no, they had to use this stupid trope and waste everything in the last minute. It still raises some questions though: When did the coma start ? Before the movie starts ? At the very end when she faces the shadow ? Somewhere in between ? But they are a lot less interesting.
Review by FLYVIP 2BlockedParent2021-09-14T13:57:48Z
Sadly what stays with you after this movie is the infuriatingly shitty ending. How can you make something that has such an original and intriguing visual style, with a novel idea on a topic that has been done a lot, and then just completely shit on it with the most overused cliché trope in fiction history used in the most lazy and unimaginative way possible ! A text message saying "You're in a coma, please wake up!" ? COME ON ! What the fuck is wrong with you ?
Anyway, if you scrape these last 30 seconds, it is pretty good though.
A young girl that doesn't seem to want to come home when her mother is there, she's sleeping outdoors, that seems to have been going on for a while, so when she find an ad for a sleep study, that would both allow her to sleep in a comfortable place and be paid, she jumps on it. It's never said why she's not coming home (maybe a representation of the coma then ?) but she's going to class, so it wouldn't be that hard for her mother to find her if she wanted to.
There are other people in the sleep study, we'll pass on the fact that everything is mostly centred on her only because the guy in charge of the study wants to fuck her and starts stalking her.
What the study does, is visualize people's dreams. So here's the first good point of the movie: the dream sequences. When viewed in their ridiculously low tech control room on tiny screens barely bigger than phones (really, when you first see the control room it's really wtf is that ? Couldn't they have at least real screens ?), not much, but we also get immersed in them. They're black and white, foggy, creepy and of course weird. Visually really interesting. Two small things though; they're only linear, it's always a tunnel progression forward, like a 80s first person dungeon RPG, and they sometimes have sound, which was weird as the machine to visualize them doesn't.
Then comes the original idea and theme of the study: there is a phase of sleep where everybody's dream end the same way; with a terrifying human shadow with glowing eyes lurks next to you, and then a even worse next one where people open their eyes, while still asleep, and see the actual room they are in, with the same shadow lurking next to their bed. The point of the study seems to be to show that is a general phenomenon for everybody. A small issue here, if that was the case, you wouldn't need to be able to actually see what people dream of to at least see that there is this weird pattern. Would have been much better, realistic and scarier, if the phase was not visible from the outside. Maybe less impressive on the screen, but psychologically more impactful. You can't have people people opening their eyes and shaking in terror in their bed while their vitals go crazy and pretend that's the way everybody sleeps and nobody noticed before. This is really sacrificing the meaningful for the cheap visual effect, the equivalent of a jump scare.
This idea though ! So much potential basically unexplored by the movie. What is this thing ? Is it a single entity or several ? Is it conscious ? Has it always been there ? Does it come from the past or from outside ? What does it want ? Is it creeping into the waking world ? It's always a little sad when some fiction finds a great unexplored idea and doesn't exploit it, but now it's been used and others can't expand on it.
It then gets weirder, Sarah sleepwalks for what seems like hours and miles, leading to (in the dream) a ally full of the creepy shadows and a kind of castle and (in reality) a field where her lost phone is, and it's ringing. Is this part reality ? Or a dream ? And if a dream whose ? You would tend to think "not a dream" because when dreams are shown, they do not look reality like.Yet it is very strange. Nobody is around, except from the nurse and security guard that are also surprised that no one is answering the phone, bringing a bit of reality. However if you didn't catch on it, the alternating shots between the other researcher, in a city full of lights and cars, and Sarah and Jeremy, walking with no one and nothing that moves all around, vividly shows that something is wrong.
After that comes the horror part, where the shadows seem to come in the waking world, hunting them, continuing the blurring between real world and dreams.
And the movie could have stopped there. On the last shot when she's facing the shadow. And it would have been great. With lots of interesting questions.
But she finds herself back at Jeremy's place, seemingly having killed him while they were having sex. She sees herself in the mirror, and she has fangs, like she had in Jeremy's dream.
And the movie could have stopped there. When she realizes she's in a dream, and we wonder when did the dream start. And it would have been great. With lots of interesting questions.
But no, they had to use this stupid trope and waste everything in the last minute. It still raises some questions though: When did the coma start ? Before the movie starts ? At the very end when she faces the shadow ? Somewhere in between ? But they are a lot less interesting.