While We Sleep
While We Sleep is the latest film directed by Andrzej Sekula (Cube²: Hypercube, Fait Accompli). He is mostly known as a cinematographer, he worked on Reservoir Dogs, American Psycho, Vacancy, and other titles, and has not directed an entire feature since Pleasure Drivers back in 2006. It is unclear what made him reconsider this decision, but the results are such that I wish he had not reconsidered it.
After a horrific joke that Cora (Lyra Irene Gross) plays on her thirteenth birthday guests, she starts behaving oddly. Her parents bother to worry her, Jennifer (Jacy King, Killer Island) and Derek (Brian Gross, Dream Killer), and rush her to the hospital.
Nina (Darya Tregubova, Stranger, My Beloved Ghost) performs a CAT scan on the girl and is quite horrified by the findings. She thinks that she has a case of Night Terrors and moves in with the family to keep an eye on Cora. What she discovers in Cora’s case is far worse than a sleep disorder.
While We Sleep comes across as an unpolished work with lots of unresolved plot points, central as well as peripheral. It begins with a rather mysterious scene that feels reminiscent of The Omen momentarily, progresses towards clumsy attempts at being a creepy kid classic before it turns into The Exorcist. Actually, more like one of a million unbelievably cheap sub-exploitation movies of The Exorcist, only made better by the fact that the film does not have American actors pretending to be in a position in the film that takes place in Ukraine.
Cora acts in an outlandishly funny way and apart from that, not much really happens. And any attempt at creating excuses for inconsistency is pretty much disregarded with two stilted CGI shots in the opening. A demon, yes, but when will it come and do something? Most of the Exorcist rip-offs at least had some merit in them, so audiences don’t sleep in the middle of them.
A little bit of blood shed, let’s toss in some unclothing, the possessed character was hurling well, swearing, etc. Gosh, she was so cool! Most of the time, Cora just wanders about in silence, grumpy in the way only teenage girls can be and that is unsettling for their parents.
When it does come, While We Sleep shows us things we have seen over and over again. The elements of levitation, walking on the spine, talking in a vox and making revelations that Cora had no chance of knowing. Each of these gets no more than a couple of screen minutes. Not even Father Andrey’s exorcism (Oliver Trevena, Out of Death, The Reckoning) who has such a resemblance to Jason Statham that I expected him to attempt to punch the devil out of the girl was any better, it lasted about 5 minutes as well. The reason is that all of these are very quickly done so that a twist ending can conveniently be included. But by that time, it is the audience that will have fallen asleep.
Boring for most parts with the only activity being limited to the last five minutes, While We Sleep is basically hurt by the screenplay done by the star, Brian Gross and Rich Ronat (Grand Isle) which seems to be more about dialogue and less about horror. There is for sure, no way to salvage the film but the case here is it would have been less of a disaster if it got to the point a little quicker and focused on the exorcism more.
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