Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		1.5

Parasomnia Blu-ray Movie Review

This one just might put you to sleep.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 3, 2010

I’ve never walked out of a movie at the theater. I’m just not that kind of guy. I pay my $9.50 or whatever and hope for the best. It helps that I’m not easily offended and that I have no problems with slow paced films—really the only two reasons anyone ever ducks out of a theater early. There was one instance, however, when I was this close to bolting. My then-girlfriend/now-wife and I went to the cinema on a lazy Sunday with no intentions of seeing anything in particular. When we arrived, there was nothing on the marquee that interested us, but, well, we drove over there, so we had to see something. We were on a bit of a horror kick at the time, so we decided on FeardotCom, the 2002 film by director William Malone, and one of the first entries in the so- called “torture porn” genre popularized by Saw and Eli Roth’s Hostel. “Should we leave?” I asked midway through the film. We weren’t grossed out or offended—although, certainly, the movie has no artistic or otherwise redeemable merits whatsoever—we were just monumentally bored and almost in disbelief over how poorly constructed and creatively bankrupt the film is. I got the same feeling from Malone’s latest movie, Parasomnia, which is just now going straight to video after being filmed in 2008.

Johnny Depp called. He wants to know how he ended up in this film.

I don't really see any basis for why Malone is included in the Showtime series Masters of Horror. John Carpenter, absolutely. Dario Argento? For sure. I’ll even throw Tobe Hooper a bone for his one bonafide horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (Okay, and Poltergeist, but we all know the stories surrounding that one.) While he churned out a fairly strong short film for MoH with The Fair Haired Child, and directed one of the better episodes of Tales From the Crypt, Malone’s theatrical films—two derivative, z-grade creature features in the 1980s, 1999’s ill-advised House on Haunted Hill remake, and the universally panned FeardotCom—have been less than impressive. The fact is, Malone has yet to make a good horror film, let alone a masterful one. Still, I have to respect his tenacity. Malone funded the entirety of Parasomnia himself, cutting costs by shooting on 16mm, and ensuring complete creative control of the project. And yet this only adds to why Parasomnia is so disappointing. Here, Malone has the chance to write and direct a film his way—completely free of studio interference—but the results are near-disastrous. Is Parasomnia better than FeardotCom? I don’t know. Marginally, maybe. All I can say is that, had I gone to see it in theaters, I’d be sorely missing my $9.50 right now.

The story, at least, shows flashes of originality, although the brief sparks are snuffed out by pervasive horror film clichés. Danny Sloan (Dylan Purcell) is a lonely art school student—his girlfriend just ditched him, leaving behind a nearly barren apartment—who goes to visit his friend Billy (Dov Tiefenbach) in rehab. On his way out, Danny passes through “the psych ward” to look into the padded cell of notorious serial killer Byron Volpe (Patrick Kilpatrick), an antiquarian book dealer, skilled mesmerist, and basically the evilest sumbitch on the planet. He’s your typical Hannibal Lecter type—keenly intelligent, easily angered, prone to quoting ominous-sounding literature. Volpe is kept in the middle of the room, hooded, gagged, and chained up in a perpetual standing position, a scene that looks like Guantanamo gone gothic. (Are we really supposed to believe that he stands up like that all day?)

Next door, Danny notices Laura Baxter (Cherilyn Wilson), a young woman with a rare form of parasomnia. She’s essentially Sleeping Beauty; nearly her entire life has been spent in slumber, as she wakes up only periodically for a few minutes at a time. Since she’s never really lived, she’s as morally pure as the driven snow, and naturally, Volpe wants nothing more than to corrupt her. Until he can break free of the psych ward—which he inevitably does—he psychically projects into her dreams, which take place in a bargain-basement CGI nightmare landscape of twisting mirrors and gnarled treehouses. You might call it imaginative, but most of Malone’s imagery is cribbed from Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. Ever cost-cutting, Malone even recycles the monster from The Fair Haired Child here, having him pop out of nowhere like an oogedy boogedy hobgoblin in one of the film’s few scares.

The movie veers quickly into nah, I don’t buy it territory when Danny, who suddenly remembers that he met Laura as a child and falls helplessly in love her, decides to kidnap her from the hospital and take her back to his dingy apartment. (You know, because he has the mental wherewithal and medicinal know-how to care for a chronic parasomniac.) Bad idea, Danny. Oh, and the less I say about the leering, sexually charged sponge bath he gives his catatonic kidnappee— which supplies the film’s dose of gratuitous nudity—the better. When Laura does come to, she talks like Jodie Foster in Nell (“Like a t’wee inna win!”), only actress Cherilyn Wilson, best known for her role in the 90210 reboot, is no Jodie Foster and can’t pull it off. (To be fair, Foster couldn’t either, really. Have you seen Nell lately?) Without spoiling too much, Volpe possesses the pure-of-heart Laura and sends her on a murderous rampage, pursued by dag-nabbit- I’m-gonna-crack-this-case Detective Garrett (Jeffrey Combs). For the finale, all the key players end up in a warehouse that looks like a low-rent version of the set of The Cell, complete with herky-jerky automatons in wannabe-creepy mechanical dioramas.

Forget the lapses in narrative logic, the implausibilities and other irrational moments that require the suspension of impossible amounts of disbelief—Parasomnia is just plain dull. The underlying drama, Danny’s supposed love for Laura, is laughable at best, and Byron Volpe’s dubious motives are undercooked, lacking any real psychological substance. The dialogue is stilted, the performances barely register, and the weird attempts at comedy—like Laura chewing on a squeaky toy—seem completely out of place. Gorehounds will get a few good practical effects—intestines rupturing from a sliced stomach, Volpe using a dead guy as a literal meat puppet—but there’s nothing here that adventurous movie watchers haven’t seen before. Most damningly, though, Parasomnia isn’t scary. At all. And if your horror film doesn’t have any good scares, it sure as hell better pack an emotional wallop or a philosophical uppercut. Parasomnia has neither. For a much better film about mesmerism and murder, check out Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure, which balances its grisly horror elements with genuine psychological insight.

Parasomnia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

E1 brings Parasomnia to Blu-ray with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that does what it can with the film's low budget source material. Shot on 16mm, the film is never going to have the clarity of a 35mm production, and you'll notice that most scenes have a soft, hazy quality, a product of decreased analog resolution, poor lighting, and—I'm assuming—less than top-level lenses. There are times when you can make out an appreciable amount of fine detail, but overall the picture just isn't as resolved as most high definition images. Of course, it doesn't help that the film's color palette is as murky as a mud puddle at night. A look at the screenshots will tell you this is a dark, dimly lit film, and there are few instances of vivid—or even well saturated—color. Skin tones are pallid, black levels are hazy, and contrast is generally on the weak side. Worse, when we go into Laura's dreams, the 16mm foreground image clashes awkwardly with the CGI landscapes in the background. Grain is fairly heavy throughout, but at least it's not completely smeared away by DNR. I'm sure Parasomnia looks better on Blu-ray than on DVD, but I'll bet the visual divide between the two is more of a crack than a chasm.

Parasomnia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Probably the best thing about Parasomnia's Blu-ray presentation is this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which capably handles all of the film's sonic requirements. That said, there's really not a lot going on here. Horror films are typically host to all manner of creepy crawly sound design, but this one really sticks to the basics—balanced, comprehensible dialogue, dynamically solid music that complements the tension (or, in this case, tries to complement the attempts at tension), and a modest amount of place-establishing ambience and environmental atmospherics. You'll hear some thunder in the rears, some whispering—stuff like that—but that's about it. And it's fairly quiet. Most of the action takes place up front and rarely competes with the dialogue volume-wise. Overall, the audio design is closer to that of a SyFy original than a theatrical feature film, but this track has no real shortcomings in reproducing the movie's limited soundscape.

Parasomnia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Commentary by Director William Malone
Malone seems like such a nice guy here that it makes me really wish Parasomnia were better. Throughout the track, he offers up the usual insights about the creation of the project, the challenge to fund it, and the shooting process. I have to say that watching the film with the commentary is much more enjoyable that watching it without.

Making of Featurette (SD, 13:23)
Here, a woman from TV-WIRE, wielding an enormous microphone, interviews various members of the cast and crew on set. This is really just a warm up for:

Interviews with the Cast and Crew (SD, 52:11)
Includes interviews with director William Malone, actors Dylan Purcell, Cherilyn Wilson, Jeffrey Combs, Timothy Bottoms, and Patrick Kilpatrick, Composer Nicholas Pike, and Visual Effects Supervisor Gene Warren III.

Deleted Scenes (SD, 12:14)
There are three deleted scenes here, including the film's "original black and white opening."

"The Plagues" Music Video (SD, 2:44)
Footage from the film set to music from Malone's own 1960s garage rock band.

Stills Library (1080p)

Trailer (SD, 2:27)

Parasomnia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's always admirably ballsy when a filmmaker chooses to self-finance a production, but it's doubly disappointing when the film flops and goes straight to video. William Malone's Parasomnia is marginally better than his previous film, the dismal FeardotCom, but that really isn't saying much. It goes against every bone in my critical body—I generally root for underdog writers and directors—but I'd much rather watch a glossy Hollywood horror remake than endure Parasomnia again. And that really is saying something. On a technical level, this Blu- ray likewise fails to impress, with a decent lossless audio track but murky, undefined visuals. Stay away.