Monday, January 20, 2014

Sundance Review: The Sleepwalker - 1 star

A young couple, Kaia and Andrew, are renovating Kaia's family estate.  One night Kaia's sister Christine calls.  She is at the train station and needs to be picked up.  The next day, Christine's fiancee Ira shows up.  The rest of the movie is these four people dealing with their issues.

Christine sleepwalks, and some nights Kaia follows her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself.  Their father may have been abusive, and Kaia was seriously injured when she was younger.  Andrew was a bully when he was younger, and he's still kind of a dick.  He really resents Christine and Ira being there, but he's trying to sensitive to his girlfriend.  He also feels like he's doing all the work of renovating this house.

The movie at times feels like a suspense thriller, but nothing ever happens.  Sometimes Christine is sleepwalking, the camera follows her for five minutes, then it cuts to the next day.  There are a lot of pointless sequences like that.  In a better movie, they would work to give us a sense of uneasiness or dread.  In this movie, they just bored me to tears. 

I didn't really like any of the characters.  They never had any interesting conversations, and the movie is completely devoid of any humor. I also thought it was strange that none of these characters ever go to work.  The only character who mentions having a job is Ira, but apparently he doesn't have to go to the office. 

In case it's not clear, I didn't like this movie at all. 

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