The Sleep Experiment

Kind of an odd movie that remains unsettling in the best way. The characters are all pretty interesting though they all kind of come off as average joes at the beginning. You really feel bad for all these men for being subjected to this experiment by the end, it's a bit of a tragic movie. At several points I was asking "Why didn't the experimenters intervene in any way?" but they were said to have been neglectful whole holding the experiment. The whole movie is kinda done in past tense with the main characters being the test subjects of the experiment, though their story is told in retrospect when an investigator interviews the man who had held the experiment a few decades prior. This mode of telling the story works quite well, except for the very end when it's kind of unclear what happens at the end of the experiment. It's not really scary or theater of the mind what's omitted, I just wish they would've shown us what happened during the climax instead of beatting around it, that's the one thing the retrospective mode of telling the story does wrong.

Other than that, this movie works quite well for what it wants to do. Many of the characters are likable despite the aweful things they end up doing, and this movie does a good job, espetially with a few characters, of making it beleivable how they become a psychopath. This movie talks a lot about psychopaths, though it doesn't really say anything original or have much of a clever message like it might try to have.

This is more of a thriller/Suspense film than anything bit certainly could have become a horror film, but it stops short of it. I know nothing of the real experiments this is based on, but I found out it is based on real-life experiments. It seems more interested in philosophy than suspense though. There is a lot of "Why did this experience happen?" As opposed to what happened. This will certainly frustrate some viewers because the best parts certainly are showing the experiment themselves and those scenes are very tense. Rather than just getting the patients perspective we hear the experimenters perspective in retrospect. This will definitely frustrate some viewers, but I honestly don't understand the low ratings.

The writing is pretty decent, it's well-acted, filmed, and directed. Some of the editing makes it slightly jarring, but on the whole it still works. I came in with no expectations, maybe this helped? I really would have liked more insight into the patients, and a little more on specifically how each character does because we just don't get much information. However, on the whole it was well-done, despite it's flaws, is probably give it a 6.5, it could have been great, but it's still quite good.

Rather surprisingly, at least for me, the most interesting and compelling part of this flim were the prisoner/participants. Their interactions and backstories and even brief attempts to piece together some connection between them all and the experiment were all significantly more interesting than the police investigation framing narrative or the goofy doctor.

As for where it starts to come apart is the ending. After apparently proudly setting up little clues throughout the film, it indulges itself in a bit overly long expo-dump basically revealing some shocking and disturbing twist behind the motivation of the experiment, but nothing really regarding the experiment itself.

The problem with this is that the "disturbing twist" was somewhat easily figured out long, long before it unfolded. And given how the ending went, it was seemingly clear that this twist was all they had, and they fumbled it pretty badly.

Without spoiling it, I can only say, as an unrelated but parallel example; when a criminal acts like a weirdo and a freak in front of the police, they are going to attract attention to themselves. And the audience is going to be all over it.

After I read about this movie I knew from where it drew the inspiration. But being a UK production, it was bound to be different. And it sure was, very different than the Russian nightmare, which I think would look amazing on screen given a proper rating and execution.

The Sleep Experiment is a mellow version of what we could have had, but still interesting and fun experience. Very good characters, nice development of the three acts and a finale that was maybe a little too ambitious. But dare I say, I appreciate the effort and trust it had in its own powers, to be its own thing and show what it wanted to show.

Overall, I do recommend this one, it is quite tame indeed but nevertheless a nice add to the horror list.

Cheerio!

So this movie is based off of the amazing creepypasta, the Russian Sleep Experiment. The original creepypasta while similar to this film, ends differently, and has some different details. I personally believe that this film was well done, and liked that it dived more into the psychology of something like this. While they changed it from Russia to Britian, that change is understable, as it provides a bit more of an explanation for the English instead of Russian, and makes the film easier to reach a wider audience, however some of the other changes, like the ending being different was unwarranted. Once you get about halfway through the film, the story basically is completely original. The segments that make it an investigation into it was genius, and made it have more of an unification feel, and worked well for the ending. The ending they chose to do, while satisfying, also had some problems, as it doesn't feel as terrifying as the original ending of the creepypasta. I would recommend this to people if they're trying to find where they lie on the "Horror O' Meter", and understand how much gore they can handle, as it has a small amount of intense gore. Besides that, a movie I enjoyed but think people can skip.