SLEEP IMPACT
PARASOMNIA (15)
Director: James Ross II
Screenplay: James Ross II
Starring: Jasmine Matthews, RJ Brown, Sally Stewart
Running time: 85 minutes
Shudder
Review: RJ Bland
There's nothing quite like a good night's sleep. That feeling of getting into a comfortable bed after a long, hard day and gently slipping into a deep slumber, before waking the next morning feeling refreshed and relaxed. Sleep not only feels good, it's vital too - we need it to repair cells and process memories. Unfortunately, though, getting enough decent sleep isn't easy for many of us. Screen time, stress, stimulants, mental health, medical issues - there are an array of reasons why so many people struggle. Lying awake at night worrying, the pitch-black darkness, bad dreams. No wonder some of us have come to dread it, and it's something horror filmmakers have exploited for decades. Perhaps the most famous example is Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where the spirit of a serial killer begins killing teenagers in their dreams. And as you know, when you die in your dreams, you die in real life too! More recently, we've had films like Insidious (2010), where a young boy can astral project into a purgatory realm called 'the further' and the underseen (and underrated) Come True (2020), where a young woman commits to a sleep study but soon realises that nightmares and dreams soon begin to overlap into the real world. The realm of sleep has long been fertile ground for horror. Hell, even the concept of an incubus, a demon that assaulted people at night, is now thought to be a medieval explanation of now what is known as sleep paralysis. Parasomnia, directed by James Ross II, attempts to reconnect that link between night terrors and the supernatural...
On her 15th birthday, Riley (Jasmine Matthews) lies asleep in her bedroom at her foster home when her foster mother suddenly begins killing people before tearing out her own eyes (eww). But Riley isn't simply asleep. She's trapped in a state of sleep paralysis, able to witness the carnage unfolding around her without being able to wake up, escape, or do anything to stop it. Fast forward to the present day and Riley is now grown up, living in her old family home, which she has since inherited (where her dad murdered her mum!). Even a decade later, she follows a rigid sleep routine because she believes the night terrors that have plagued her all her life are directly connected to the real-life deaths that occur while she sleeps. One of her rules is that if she's sharing a house with anyone, they must fall asleep before she does - only then will they be safe from whatever malignant force has attached itself to her. Her boyfriend, Cam (RJ Brown), has learned to accept this routine, as has David, one of her old foster home friends (Stephen Barrington), who has come to stay with his girlfriend. They have a lovely evening, have a few drinks (well, Riley doesn't) and then Riley shows them all how she can instantly make herself fall asleep. Fun! But during the early hours, David wakes to strange sounds coming from Riley's bedroom, eerily similar to the ones he heard on her 15th birthday as she slept while their foster mother ran amok. It turns out Cam has become lax about following Riley's rules, and he was awake when she fell asleep. A mistake that puts them all in immediate danger...
I suspect that Parasomnia will be among the first wave of a new generation of genre films that blend elements of liminal, backrooms-esque horror with more established subgenres and formats. The success of that 'pillow fort' scene in Insidious 6 suggests it's something audiences are both responding to and fearing. While it is fundamentally a supernatural occult film, Parasomnia is punctuated by flashes of lo-fi, liminal unease. Arguably, those moments also make up some of its most effective sequences too.
Writer/Director James Ross II throws us straight into the action from the outset, with a nasty little opening scene that neatly sets up the backstory and all the central players, villain included. When we jump forward in time, most filmmakers would give you space to settle into the new world our characters inhabit. More drama than horror for thirty minutes or so. Parasomnia, however, never affords you that luxury because the moment we reach the present day, there's an immediate sense of dread and anxiety. This is achieved through smart, subtle direction and also from Jasmine Matthews ability to exude a faint sense of unease. She seems to be in control of her situation but you can sense a little doubt there. We're all just nervously waiting bedtime, in the same way that the original Paranormal Activity (2008) did. Suffice to say, when it finally arrives, so do the scares, with Ross cleverly fusing the uncanny horrors of nightmares with real-world terror. The dream sequences are pure nightmare fuel, with Riley being pursued in an endless maze by a masked figure and the decision to have them look like Super-8 reels is a stroke of genius. In reality, things may look glossier, but they're no less effective. There's a scene where one of the characters is having a smoke on the porch late at night, when he thinks he sees something in the garden that is reminiscent of some of the horrors of Scott Derrickson's Sinister. But the film never feels like a cheap knock off of established classics, it very much has its own distinct flavour and lore.
However in its attempt to deepen its voodoo-inspired mythology, the film's efforts are handled rather clumsily through the introduction of a new character during the third act, who delivers one enormous exposition dump. Like many a horror movie before it, the more we learn about what the antagonist is and why and how it is operating, the more convoluted it feels, and the less frightening it becomes. Likewise, the decision to introduce a new antagonist in the second half of the film somewhat diminishes the fear factor of the ghoulish nightmare demon that proved so effective during the early stages. So, in short: a genuinely compelling and unsettling first half, followed by a messier and less potent (but no less gory) second. But generally speaking, there are far more positives than negatives. The mid-credit sequence sets up the potential for a sequel – something we'd certainly be eager for if one ever arrives.
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