The Dark Sleep (2012)
Following her recent divorce, a writer moves into a new home to begin penning her next book. Little does she know this house has some dark secrets. A giant rat visits her in the middle of the night and in her basement lies a pathway to another dimension. Haunting dreams soon begin in this loosely based retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic tale, “The Dreams in the Witch House.”
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The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Dark Sleep is inspired by the short story "Dreams in the Witch House"; I stress the term "Inspired". Only a few of the elements of the original Lovecraft story are present in Piper's script. Not a problem for me, but a lot of Lovecraft fan boys tend to obsess on changes made to the original material. That said, all of the truly fun element of the original Lovecraft story remain: Brown Jenkin, Euclidian Geometry, and Surreal Dream Sequences.Piper's film follows a young writer who is recently divorced from her husband and is struggling to put her life back together in a new house. And if her life wasn't bad enough, the house she has just moved into has Brown Jenkin living in the walls, and a dimensional portal in the basement. If you are familiar with the films of Brett Piper you will already know of his use of Old School Stop-motion FXs, which is what really adds to the charm of this production. Sure the acting is forced and stilted; sure the scripting of some of the scenes are overly drawn out and in need of some editing; but in the end Piper delivers what we paid the price of admission for: dumb girls being chased around by claymation monster. If you want ponderous melodrama then go see Spielberg's Lincoln; if you want to eat popcorn and shout at the screen then see Dark Sleep -- you won't be disappointed.