Director: Jonathan Hopkins
Writer: Richard Hobley, Jonathan Hopkins (Screenplay)
Starring: Maggie Q, Will Kemp, Sophia Wiseman, Kristen Bush, Sam Troughton, Lucas Bond, Honor Kneafsey
Plot: A sleep doctor tries to protect a family from a demon that feeds on people in their nightmares.
Tagline – Welcome to the Original Nightmare
Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Standard Horror
Story: Slumber starts when a young girl sees her brother have such a horrific night terror, he ends up falling out a window and dying, years later Alice (Q) has devoted her life to studying night terrors, with her latest clients the Morgan family, Sarah (Bush), Charlie (Throughton), Daniel (Bond) and Emily (Kneafsey) are coming to get help for the whole family having the same night terror of a demon coming for them in their sleep.
The deeper Alice gets into the case, the more she learns about something called a Night Hag, which haunts people’s dreams until it takes the soul of the victim, now her own family has become the target of this demon.
Thoughts on Slumber
Characters – Alice lost her brother when she was a child to night terrors, this has seen her become an expert on the study, trying to help everyone she can deal with the struggles, she does still suffer herself and when a whole family comes to her for help, she must relive the nightmares of her childhood, she must decide whether to put her own family before the one in need, when the demon comes for her family. Tom is the husband of Alice, who does get concerned by the actions through the film, he wants to protect their daughter and needs her to step away from this case. Niamh is the daughter of Alice, who could become the target of the hag, while the Morgan family are the family that are being haunted by hag, they need help and being left feeling helpless.
Performances – Maggie Q is the biggest name in this film and even she can’t get much out of her character, the performances in this film are poor, with nobody making an impact with this becoming a bland from a character point of view.
Story – The story here follows a family that are suffering night terrors, which even after getting more help, find themselves helpless to a demon that haunts sleepwalkers. While this story could easily be one of the scariest ideas you could image in horror, it ends up falling flat with us needing to balance too many characters to get the true scare factor, we don’t meet an ‘expert’ until way too late into the film and then a flash bang, it is over, we lose all the creepy ideas that could come from the horror involved here.
Horror – The horror could be scary, only the film fails to capture the horror involved within the idea, with most being something is happening, scream a lot, help, it’s over.
Settings – The film uses the home settings to show how it starts, while it does move the actions to a specialist facility, where it happens again, only we don’t seem to make a major point about this.
Special Effects – The effects turn to shaky cam more than showing us what is causing the horror, with most being left to our imagination.
Scene of the Movie – The opening sequence does make us feel like we are going to have a great horror experience.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The fact we don’t.
Final Thoughts – This is a horror that fails to use the potential is has been given, becoming a mostly bland horror about night terrors.
Overall: Bland Horror.
