A Thomas Bess review of:
Directed By: William Malone
Starring: Dylan Purcell, Cherilyn Wilson, Patrick Kilpatrick, Jeffrey Combs, Dov Tiefenbach
Run Time: 103 minutes spent wondering just what in the hell is up with the sky.
If you’re anything like me (and my apologies if you are) your initial reaction upon hearing “parasomnia” is “Nope, that’s not a real word. Just something vaguely scientific / medical sounding they whipped up to shill a horror flick.” But damned if it’s not worth points on the Scrabble board, here’s the definition I found a few minutes back:
Par-a-som-ni-a: (n) Any of several disorders that frequently interfere with sleep, occurring especially among children and including sleepwalking, night terrors and bed wetting.
Now as amusing as a movie about night terrors and bed wetting might be, the specific disorder on display in Parasomnia is Kleine-Levin Syndrome, more commonly known as Sleeping Beauty Syndrome, in which a person spends most of their life sleeping. Sounds like a fairly restful, but fairly boring way to get through the day, right? Well, what if one of these poor, sleepy dopes was housed next door to a homicidal hypnotist with the power to invade one’s dreams and do all sorts of other terrible things? Then my friends, things get interesting.
The Plot
The plot is as follows: Danny Sloan (Purcell) is visiting his pal Billy (Tiefenbach) in the hospital, the latter just about to finish up a stint in rehab. While wandering the corridors of this rather cavernous, inadequately staffed institution, Danny comes across a comely lass named Laura Baxter (Wilson) who looks to be just fine save for the fact that she’s sleeping. A bit of nosing around confirms that she has the aforementioned KLS and a bit more disturbing, the guy in the next room over is Byron Volpe (Kilpatrick) a maniacal hypnotist so dangerous they keep him hooded and gagged 24-7 just to keep him from working any mind-bending chicanery on the orderlies. Alas, Volpe’s somehow managed to worm his way into Laura’s subconscious and he’s turned it into a twisted playground where she’s always on the run from various horrors. And if that wasn’t bad enough, some sleazebag doctor in the real world wants to move Laura to another facility and run experiments on her. This doesn’t sit well with Danny, so he does the only sensible thing and busts his snoozing sweetheart out of the hospital. As a kidnapping, it’s going about as well as can be expected until an infuriated Volpe makes his escape and proceeds to carve a bloody swath as he tracks down his wayward plaything.
The Good
So what’s good? Patrick Kilpatrick’s turn as Byron Volpe is a show stealer, no question. Not since Nathan Baesel’s turn in Behind the Mask have I been so impressed / creeped out by a character, which is even more impressive when you consider that he spends the first two thirds of the movie chained, hooded and otherwise immobile. If you don’t get spooked when he starts intoning “She’s mine in time, in time she’s mine,” you’re either made of stouter stuff than I, or are unimaginative to the point of deficiency. The rest of the cast does a good job, though Purcell and Wilson are often overshadowed by Jeffrey Combs and Dov Tiefenbach in spite of their much smaller screen time. Folks looking to get their gore on should be quite satisfied as we’re treated to a swan dive off a skyscraper, stabbings, slashings, disembowelments, eye gougings, gunshots to the face and extremely gooey skull puppetry. The dream world Volpe’s created inside Laura’s head is pretty neat too, all full of spinning mirrors, herky-jerky imp things (they look like more advanced versions of the creatures from The Gate) and the sort of spooky hospital / asylum imagery that Malone did so well in the House on Haunted Hill redux. Personally I would’ve liked to have seen this dream labyrinth done as a real set as opposed to green screen, but considering the complexity of the thing, it probably would’ve been a budget buster, so I’m not gonna complain too loudly.
The Not So Good
What’s not good? As interesting / threatening as he is, Volpe could’ve really used a stronger personality opposing him. I mean, the guy’s such a monster that you keep thinking Batman should come crashing through the skylight in his lair to kick start a final battle, but all we get is a soft spoken art student and a girl with the ultimate case of narcolepsy. Also on the Volpe side of things, there’s a creature in the dream world that “seems” to be the hypnotist’s avatar – given how monstrous he is in the waking world, the fantastic version should be something right out of Hieronymus Bosch and yet it looks more like Frankenberry mated with a Bonsai Tree. Terrifying to some perhaps, but it got chuckles from my friends and I. The reliance on CGI also hampers the scenes where Volpe is busting out his hypnotic powers. I would’ve settled for an arched eyebrows and creepy music, instead the world around him goes dark and there’s a sort of twirly, spiral thing that appears behind his head, almost like a tumbleweed halo. Again, Kilpatrick is so menacing that the effects weren’t really necessary, indeed they almost rob some of the later scenes of their power. Finally, as graphic as the kills are, I found myself hoping they’d be, not gorier, but more surreal. Given the overall dreamy nature of the story, I was thinking there’d be stuff to just turn your brain inside out, but really there’s nothing here in terms of carnage that you haven’t seen before, ‘cept maybe for the skull puppetry, which is really freakin’ cool.
Should You See It?
Should you see it? Hmmmh, that’s a bit of a toss-up. If you’re looking for standard stalk and slash, I’d say no, as the story does take a while to really get going and the questionable actions of the leads might prove frustrating to some viewers. But if you’re looking for something different than mainstream genre fare that doesn’t skimp on the gruesome, give Parasomnia a try. It probably won’t bring on night terrors or bed wetting, but I doubt you’ll want to go to sleep right after it’s over either.
The Verdict
If bed wetting is awful and night terrors is perfect, then I’d say Parasomnia is that weird falling jolt thing that brings you out of a dream sometimes (you mean a kick? -ed), and that’s pretty good, if not a bit disconcerting.
Til next time, always remember that the calls are coming from inside the house.
Tom Bess recently shaved his legendary sideburns at a cost of two hours and five pounds. The end result is a slightly puffier, but much more aerodynamic movie-reviewing machine who is still patiently waiting for Allison Mack to return his calls. While he’s waiting, he’ll read copious amounts of Lovecraft and eat too many Peach Gummy Bears.
