A yawn-inducing horror film

This week’s only English release is a yawn-inducing horror film with touches of unintended hilarity

A still from the movie Before I Wake .

Before I Wake was originally supposed to release this time last year. Then the production company got bankrupt and kept pushing the release. It still hasn’t released in the U.S. and U.K. It is a wise decision on the producers’ part because they’ve realised they don’t exactly have a product that will change their fortunes for the better. The fact that a film is the lone English release in India this Friday speaks for itself. One, it’s a pretty bad film; and two, it reflects our incredibly low standards as a movie-going audience – especially since distributors pick Before I Wake for a theatrical release here over Hail! Caesar, Steve Jobs or Macbeth.

Coming back to the film itself, well, what about it really? To begin with, it’s the horror equivalent of a Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-rom-com. The more you earnestly try to engage with the movie, the more it seems firm in its absolute resolution toward embracing dumbness. The Australian film Babadook (2014) comes to mind because it shares a somewhat similar theme with Before I Wake – about a mother and a troubled child. But the latter isn’t psychological horror, it’s supernatural horror. Fair enough. Cody is an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother when he was too young to remember, has been a difficult child to adopt.

Jacob Tremblay plays a character much like the one in

Room , a child with parental issues. He has already been sent by three sets of foster parents back to the orphanage. Enter Mark (Thomas Jane) and Jesse (Kate Bosworth), a couple still mourning the loss of their son who was roughly the age of Cody. They seem perfect for each other. Now the problem (gift/curse) with Cody is that he doesn’t sleep at all – he tries real hard not to, by drinking caffeine-powered beverages all the time. The reason is when he sleeps, he has nightmares and they manifest in his real surroundings. There is a recurring figure in the nightmare – a hilarious skeletal demon – who besides looking super fake can be really dangerous too and disappear with real people along with him. To where? Don’t ask. We know that the story will find its culmination in Jesse’s reconciliation with his dead son and Cody’s with his dead mother. But the two never meet. Amidst all the ridiculousness, Tremblay is the only positive little thing. In the final minutes when the back-story is explained, one feels a certain sadness looking at those eyes. The film shamelessly tries all the old tricks in the book to scare – child ghost under the bed, tick; there is someone behind the character who she can’t see but we can, tick; and dead child coming back to interact with parents, tick.

I abhor the use of phones in theatres but even I couldn’t help reaching out for mine a couple of times. I yawned too. A lot. Let’s say, the film thankfully ended just before I woke.

- Sankhayan Ghosh

Before I wake

Director: Mike Flanagan

Cast: Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Jane, Kate Bosworth

Duration: 96 minutes

Genre: Horror