High school student Mary is having nightmares and sleepwalking. Since she is falling asleep during the day, a teacher sends her to counselor Campbell. He is most concerned about her sleepwalking, which is dangerous.
Mary says she enjoys being scared. In fact, she compares it to being sexually aroused. Strangely enough, we never actually see this. She seems to react to being scared the way most of us would.
Mary's best friends are Debbie and Kara. She seems perfectly normal with them, though I was expecting a more withdrawn teen like, say, Carrie. A Plain Jane (but still attractive), she wants Brad to be her boyfriend, but he prefers Mandy, who is mean and dresses like a bimbo. Mary's father Jake is overprotective and not particularly sympathetic. Her mother Kelly seems more caring, and she has a younger sister Beth who needs to be shielded from inappropriate material on TV.
The hot movie is called 'The Wisher'. It is so controversial that it is being banned by some communities because of the copycat behavior it inspires. The movie is not very good, but the teens in the theater seem to like it, and the visual effects and violence may be the redeeming quality, if there is one. Mary goes with her friends, but that may not have been such a good idea.
After the movie, Mary keeps seeing the villain from 'The Wisher', or at least someone who looks like him. And tragedies start to happen in her life when she is awake. In the process of investigating just what is going on, Mary is fortunate to be friendly with movie projectionist Shane.
I don't like movies that are too scary, and this one really wasn't most of the time. There were some creepy scenes with appropriate music (or what sounded sort of like music but seemed not of this world). The kids seemed to like alternative rock music of the style that sounds like demons, such as that used with the opening credits. But no one here was really 'goth'.
I liked Mary right away once she went into her first counseling session. I've never heard of Liane Balaban, and most of her movies appear to be Canadian-made and not familiar to Americans. But she did a capable job most of the time and I'd like to see more of her. Mary was actually a very determined character and not at all like I was expecting.
Ron Silver also did a reasonably good job. There wasn't really anything outstanding here, but for the type of movie, I found it entertaining. The town is never named, but a fire truck says 'Regina Fire Dept.', though the community is referred to as 'a small town'.
One weakness (I guess they figure we were lazy, but it could have been more realistic): I've always heard that downloading movies takes a lot of time. Someone in this film downloaded a movie on the Internet and was able to fast-forward through it and watch parts of it in the time it would take most regular web sites to appear. A little extra effort to make it look like real downloading, with some editing and frustration, wouldn't have hurt.
It was okay, but nothing spectacular.
