It’s too bad that William Malone wasn’t born in the 1880’s. Then he could’ve wowed audiences during the silent era, without worrying about nonsense like plot, dialogue, or internal logic. Just him, dazzling the crowd with his macabre visions. He has an eye for the expressionistic possibilities of the genre, and a self-funded, self-written tale like Parasomnia should be an opportunity to impress. Instead, the film disappoints, buttressing the impressive images with scenes of inane chatter and predictable scares.
The titular “parasomnia” (behavioral aberrance during transitional sleep phases…or something) belongs to Laura Baxter (Cherilynn Wilson), a girl with such severe narcolepsy that she hasn’t aged mentally. Lovely, innocent, her purity attracts the main character, Danny (Dylan Purcell), as well as a sociopathic mesmerist (Patrick Kilpatrick) who uses his hypnotic powers to ensure a hospital room next to Laura. Danny’s efforts to rescue Laura provide the structure for the film, and her dreams allow for flights of fancy, as she wanders through a field of mirrors, pursued by creatures that move with the twitchy gait of Doctor Vannacutt in House on Haunted Hill and resemble the demon of “Fair-Haired Child.”
If you don’t know those two titles, you should. House on Haunted Hill was a trite remake that became a good film thanks to a great eye for the gothic and surreal. The scenes of people simply investigating the asylum hallways remain some of the creepier imagery of horror in the nineties. “Fair-Haired Child,” Malone’s creepy-as-hell episode for Masters of Horror, remains a career high. At an hour long, the dark fairy-tale story moves furiously through its images of ghost-faced monsters and expressionistic dreamscapes.
Parasomnia is not compact. At a hundred minutes long, the film offers too many scenes of characters sitting down and talking, or standing and discussing, or standing and opining. As a writer, Malone doesn’t inspire much confidence. Despite Laura’s youthful mind, it’s too much to see her, freed from endless sleep, chewing on a newspaper and joyfully spreading ice cream on her face. Additionally, Malone doesn’t always trust when to cut, allowing conversations both expositional and incidental to go on too long. Thankfully, he gets away with a few of these scenes, especially one where Detective Garrett (Jeffrey Combs, a pleasure as always) discusses the hypnotist.
I can’t think of another current horror director who would cover such a scene with those angles, with those kinds of faces, with those bold colors that celebrates the monochromatic. Likewise, the dream sequences occasionally impress, as when a body grows outward from a tree. And the climax of the film stuns. The hypnotist gathers two girls from a recital (one of them Alison Brie of TV’s Community), puts them in goggles, and forces them to play Gustav Holst while puppets creak in the background and drapes cover the enormous room in enormous contours. Watching it, I thought of the scarred Erik in The Phantom of the Opera, who likewise buried his ruined soul behind music and environment. He thought that exterior beauty could mask a broken interior.
Maybe there’s a lesson there.
RATING: C+
too long and too messed up but overall pretty entertaining
ReplyDeleteIt contains things that are good, but, as a whole, it is not good.
ReplyDeleteJames, I have to disagree with you...
ReplyDeletePerhaps the lesson here is "explorers get the arrows... the settlers get the land" I read the other reviews on this film and had to pick it up. I'm glad I did. This is a great film... an original, which may be why you didn't respond to it. We are all so use to seeing the same old thing that when something comes along that's different, we go "What the hell was that?" The things you didn't like I believe are some of its strengths. This film does take it's time to develop the story and the characters. In thinking about the plot, if the filmmakers had not done that, this film would have little emotional life. As it is there is quite a lot there to like. BTW, I did some checking; Beksinski predates Giger by quite some time so it may be better to say when we see Giger's work we are reminded of Beksinski. 4 out of 5 stars
I'm happy for your enjoyment, although, if you feel that I was put off by the film's originality, perhaps you should read my review again - my frustration lies not with the idiosyncrasy, but with the often-graceless execution. Consider, for example, how Malone explains Danny's ex-girlfriend: Danny's druggie friend simply talks about her, and we hear that she left him. Why didn't we see the two break up? It would not only have been a more cinematic method of delivering information; it would have added to Danny's desperation for a different kind of woman.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the clarification on Beksinski!
I'm certain that an entire film could be constructed on just the relationship between Danny, Laura and his past love life (that would be the Swedish version) but I don't think that audiences for this film would stand for a film that 3 hours long. We don't need to know what Danny's old girlfriend was like, only that he's is now sans a "main squeeze" and is now a bit lost. On first viewing I was a bit confused too. I went back and watched it again and realized how much I missed (probably because my cat was in heat or something oustide) or because this film is just so dense. For example , the first time I watched this I missed that the villian did not create those robot things in the end of the film but they were actually the work of Danny's drugged-out art friend. The friend was actually working on those things when Danny comes to tell him about Laura killing the cop. Almost everything we see in the end of the film is in that room... pretty cool... I missed it. So maybe if there is a problem with this film its not that there is not enough in it, but too much. But then again I take my hat off the Mr. Malone for not thinking we're stupid which most of todays films seem to think.
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