You Shall Not Sleep Tonight

Haunted by nightmares, a boy's father tries to help him sleep, bringing about a strange series of tales.

Generally, this was a rather disappointing and not that worthwhile anthology. The main feature here involving the atmospheric wraparound involving the father trying to calm the frantic son about the monsters supposedly in his closet only to continually prove otherwise makes for a solid idea to get this one going. As well, with the majority of the segments featuring characters involved in a setup where some sort of fear ends up getting exploited is a solid idea with there being a fine set of atmospheric touches featured in the majority of the segments where something happens to play off that aspect resulting in some enjoyable stalking scenes with creatures coming into play rather nicely. As they're all short enough that it's not a massive time commitment zipping into the next one quickly enough, there are some positives here even though there are quite a bit of flaws to it. The biggest drawback is that it's a secret anthology without announcing it at all so it takes a while to realize that the drawings in the comic book he's using to try getting to sleep are coming to life and playing out before us. There's little announcing it as such even once it gets going so there's not much in the way of figuring out what's going on, and the segments don't help matters by not being all that impressive or remarkable. They seem to run until they hit a punchline and then end so there's not much about them that leaves an impression as the ideas behind them aren't developed much in the short running time they last. It's what ends up bringing this one down the most.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language, and children-in-jeopardy.

No pun intended - the movie is really well done. At least when it comes to cinematography - but also the jump scares do work quite well. As you can tell (or knew already), this is a horror movie at heart ... and has a few spooky scenes to boost.

The acting is well done and because of its low budget nature it does try to convey with an original and coherent story ... and it kind of succeeds ... it works overall and the kid (main) actor helps (it's always good if so much weight is on kids shoulders to have a good cast and casting process).

Since it is Shocktober (challenge) time, I just had to watch this when it popped in my timeline/streaming service ... if you too have a lot of time and a lot of love for movies like this ... go ahead and watch.

Now, had I known that the 2024 movie "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" was a horror anthology, I might have skipped on it. Yeah, horror anthologies are usually not worth the time of day, as most of them are questionable affairs.

And was "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" any different? Well, I wasn't particularly entertained, especially since some of the stories were hardly even horror. As with all horror anthologies, the segments were of various contents and various entertainment value. It was the narrative segment, the one that was told in between the segments, that was actually the one with the most horror elements to it, and it was carrying the same title as the movie. Other than that one, then "The Last Seance" was noteworthy, whereas the rest, yeah, don't bother.

I will say that the acting performances in each segment were good. I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list, which was actually something that spoke well in favor of "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight", as I enjoy watching new and unfamiliar talents on the screen.

"You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" was watchable, but it was nothing outstanding, not even for a horror anthology. It is not, however, watchable a second time, as it was a bit of a struggle to get through the first time. And let's just be honest here, the segments weren't capable of sustaining more than a single viewing.

In honesty, it is the production value and the acting performances of this anthology that sort of kept the ordeal afloat.

My rating of "You Shall Not Sleep Tonight" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.