Macabre…ish Horror Review: Slumber
Slumber, 2017/ 1 hr 24 min.
A child, Liam (William Rhead), struggled with sleep walking and during a late night game of hide and seek with…something, he falls out of a hall window. It was witnessed by his sister, Alice, who was woken out of her sleep by her brother talking. Before he fell, he said it was standing next to her and it terrified them both.
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Alice (Maggie Q), now an adult with a family of her own, is now a sleep doctor, though she still struggles with the loss of her brother and her own sleep walking disorder.
She encounters the Morgan family with a son, Daniel (Lucas Bond), who is struggling with sleep paralysis after the loss of a loved one. He reminds Alice of her brother. But it’s not just Daniel, the entire family is having various degrees of parasomnia, sleep walking and sleep talking. Alice thinks the loss is the trigger. It’s unusual for an entire family, who are all doing the sleep study the next night. Alice will be observing.
Meanwhile, that night the family is active. Dad, Charlie (Sam Troughton), is rocking an invisible baby in the rocking chair, then crying he gets up and punches a hole in the wall. Mom, Sarah (Kristen Bush), is up blending food and sticking her hand in the blender. The daughter, Emily (Honor Kneafsey), sleep walks outside and gets tree trimmers and starts cutting up her toys. Daniel is locked in horror, he cannot move or scream and a dark presence grows. It’s not until the dog starts barking that the family wakes up.
The father, Charlie, has lost his job and has begun drinking. They need this therapy to work. And Daniel is terrified of and be attacked by something and he has the bruises to prove it.
They all settle in for the sleep study. All of their brain waves will be monitored and a night vision camera is recording, they will also be monitored visually by Alice. And like clockwork, three of the 4 sit up in unison and leave their beds. And Daniel’s eyes snap open and his body freezes. Darkness grows in a corner of the room and leaps on Daniel. The other members of the family are at different walls, some singing, some talking, all unaware of what is happening.
After hearing Daniel’s screams, Alice and another doctor enter to wake the family. Charlie attacks Alice, still asleep, he’s vicious and violent. A janitor, Cam (Vincent Andriano), seeing this from the hall, has to strike him with a broom to get him off.
Later, the police hauls Charlie off in cuffs, the other doctor is concerned he’s a danger to the family after seeing a massive scar on Daniel’s chest. But Daniel swears it’s from the nightmare monster and not his Dad.
Looking back at the family’s chart, they were all in REM sleep, it doesn’t make any sense. After doing some research, Alice comes across a slavic nightmare spirit called the Nocnitsa.
Later, that night, The Morgan family continue struggling. Mom wakes up after sleep walking and thinking her teeth were falling out. Only to go down stairs at the sound of their dog crying. Her daughter has killed it in her sleep.
When Mom goes to check on Daniel, the entity is attacking him. Sarah, in desperation, returns to the hospital to confront Alice because everything is worse and her husband is in jail.
Alice is no longer certain this is parasomnia but an actual parasitic entity attacking this family. And the janitor, Cam, who hit Charlie, quit. He saw the entity and it spooked him. He warned Alice to never see that family again.
Meanwhile, the entity is only getting stronger and more aggressive. It’s now attacking the family when they’re awake. And Alice is really struggling with all of it and it’s affecting her home life.
Alice goes to Cam to find out what he knows, he is related to a man, Amado (Sylvester McCoy), his grandfather, who has survived the entity. Maybe he knows how to get rid of it. The news isn’t good.
This British supernatural horror directed by Jonathan Hopkins. This movie is pretty, it’s more thriller than horror. It’s not graphic or gory but there is blood. It builds well and effects are solid. This is well made, paced and cast, you get a nice eerie flick with graphic horror. It’s a good story that just gets better as it goes.