vasiln

I took a chance on this, because no reviews.

Sleep Tight is basically a horror anthology with interstitial. Although episodic, it might as well be a 3 hour-ish anthology with 12 stories, 2 per episode, at about fifteen minutes each. It seems that they'd hoped for more episodes, and the interstitial isn't really resolved (more of a post-credits cliff-hanger.)

Production values are low, but the people that made it seem to care about having done a good job. I'd put it somewhere between, high Youtube and Sci-Fi channel in terms of production quality.

Acting is a mixed bag-- sometimes poorly overacted, sometimes, pro-level. Same goes for writing. Settings are strong. Effects are nothing to write home about, but there's never a sense that something is off-screen because it was too expensive/hard to implement-- they're integrated well with the stories. Suspense/horror is often created by camera effects and action, which are overdone, part of what it makes it feel Youtube-ish. Sound's just okay, serves the purpose, and doesn't get in the way.

Stories themselves have a strong teen orientation. There are a lot of stories about smart phones here. (Remarkably, cell phones almost never lose signal.) Most stories skip over huge swathes of the story. Often, the ending. For good or ill. I'd rather see no ending than a poor ending, and I approve of the decision to leave a lot unspoken. But I know that it irritates a lot of other people.

The pacing is very strong thoughout, helped by the fact that the stories average less than fifteen minutes each. There are plenty of small twists along the way. It's not boring or spread-out.

The best episode of this, hands-down, is the final half of the final episode, where I think the people making this hit their stride. I like that-- I like to see people learning as they go. If you want to skip to it, and then see if you like anything else, that'd be fine.

Overall, I;d say that this is not something you should go out of your way to watch, but if you're bored and out of options, this is going to be more entertaining than a lot of other things you could choose. I'd be inclined to say, it does what it says on the tin, if I wasn't scared that would be misinterpreted in the context of the title.

So you know Cage is in a lot of movies, right? And most of them are really, really bad. Because Cage seems to take any role that will have him, and he's a *good* actor, and a *modest* actor, and if the director and the script tell him to be Raising Arizona or Wild at Heart, only dialed to 11-- wait, those are already dialed to 11, make it 12-- then he's going to do that. So, we get things like the Wicker Man remake and Con Air.

And you know that *some* of those movies are really, really good. Because Cage is a good, modest actor, and if the director and the script are visionary enough, Cage isn't going to be scared off, and he's going to be capable enough, modest enough, to do what they ask him to do. So, we get films like Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas.

Dream Scenario? It's that second kind of Cage movie. Undeniably unique. Visionary. Unforgettable.

It's the kind of movie that flirts with meditating on a lot of different themes. Narcissism, not the pathological kind, just the everyday kind that we all know we're guilty of, unless we're too narcissistic to acknowledge it. Modern celebrity, the kind where you're famous for being famous and not really anything else. Marketing, as low-hanging a fruit as it is.

But DS is sophisticated enough to never turn those meditations into some hollow, ideological allegory, to turn them into a manifesto. Ultimately, it is the story of a guy who has a really bad few months, interesting as those months may be. It is a horror movie without any gore, monsters, or serial killers. And it is an *unbearably light* horror film, featuring only the horror of meaninglessness, of quiet inadequacy.

I know it's not for everyone. I hope, in all those words that I've written, that the wrong audience can identify themselves, can opt out. Because if you're the *right* audience? You cannot miss Dream Scenario. It's not even an option for you. If you don't see it now, you're just going to hear about it, over and over again, until you see it. Save yourself some time and see it now.

I had to watch this because of the title. I do amateur CGI. It's almost all bad. There's little sign of improvement. If I were smarter, I'd pick a new hobby.

So, here's the plot: three sorority sisters (one decent) and three frat bros (one decent) go to a Cabin in the Woods to get drunk. I can get drunk in my bedroom, but hey, kids these days. The cabin's by a lake. It's a horror movie. There's "Gator" in the title. What do you think happens next? The gator rips the limbs off of the unlikable ones. I don't even consider this a spoiler.

Does anything else happen? No. What else would you want to see happen? It's a horror movie about a poorly animated CGI alligator.

First thing first: is the CGI, in actuality, bad? It *is* bad. But it's not as bad as a lot of CGI in days past. The gator isn't animated very well. Its limbs don't seem to touch the ground. Eventually, the filmmakers give up on pretending that the gator should interact with the ground at all. The electrical effects are also bad. But, hey, it's a lot better than the crap I've made. When you ignore the whole animation and electricity things, it looks pretty good. And who cares? It's not about whether the gator's legs touch the ground. It's about the fact that they don't. And also, it's about how people that use internet acronyms in everyday speech are ripped into small pieces.

Really, this is as B-movie as you'd expect, but Gator never pretends to be anything else. And thanks to the wonder of modern tools, the production quality is still great (well, minus the skating gator legs.) Plus, the acting is certainly good enough. Maddie Lane does an especially good job. Probably the weakest point is the writing, where they earn a few chuckles out of this horror-comedy, but never any guffaws. But, that's not a major criticism for a film that aims as low as Gator.

Don't expect Sophie's Choice, and I think you'll enjoy yourself. It's only like sixty minutes long. What do you have to lose?