Chasing Sleep

I saw this movie on cable the other night and I have to say that I really just don't get it. It was slow it was boring and I really really hate it when you can't tell if what you are watching is really happening for if the character is hallucinating!!! Can someone please tell me if the wife is really alive or did she die!!!!

I was astonished. It has been a really long time since I've seen a movie that good. Everything here works like magic. I mean, the screenplay, the actors, the moods, the dialogues and most of all, the cinematography are all astonishing. This is a REAL movie and I really can't understand why my friend up above (or under) me gave it a poor review. This is the kind of cinema that reconciles me with Americain films. I've always loved Hollywood, but they have gone too far. This one is different. No big budget, no big Hollywood machine, just plain and simple movie making, and it works. Chasing Sleep is a really good movie, don't pass on the opportunity to see it. I don't think everyone will enjoy it, it's not an action movie or a comedy, but please, but open minded. This one is worth the 90 minutes your ass is on the couch!

This is a pretty good thriller. Better than I expected. However, ahem... you can't help but see the director's influences... I mean, David Lynch's "Lost Highway" (the punch in the face waking the protagonist from his daze, the way he vanishes into dark hallways, and many more details...), Christopher Nolan's "Following"(not for the structure of the story but more for the direction, dialogues, etc.) and occasionally Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (especially the bathtub creature episode).

Despite the gathering of borrowed imagery, this film still develops an obvious personal style and a precise direction. All in all, a very good first film owing also a lot to Jeff Daniels's performance. Hopefully, the next one will be less obviously influenced.

This is a great example of a movie that doesn't conform to Hollywood conventions. It is essentially about a man who awakes to realise his wife hasn't come home from work the day before, and what happens to him during the day while he waits for the police. The movie never leaves the man's house, apart from a very short scene in a hospital, and contains no soundtrack. By doing this it creates more tension than if it had a typical Hollywood soundtrack, made up of the usual scary music and screeching sounds. Also as the house begins to fall apart, it becomes more and more claustrophobic. The fact that the storyline is fluid and ambiguous could infuriate or bore some people, however it is chilling without resulting to blood or gore, and never even gives any real answers. Though nowhere near as good, it resembles a David Lynch movie, in that it challenges conventions of plot, and remains ambiguous throughout. Don't watch for any out and out shocks, but it is a movie that will grow on you, and one that you'll still be thinking about later.

Wouldn't this be a better world if today's talented thriller-makers knew how to end their films as well as they know how to start them and keep them going? Most of the time you'll be thinking "where has this movie been hiding all these years?", but at the end you'll almost be sorry that you invested the time to watch it in the first place. There is an undeniable mastery in the way Walker directs: first he grounds the film in reality, then he allows it to go on bizarre trips into the surreal, and all the time he moves the camera gracefully through the limited sets. Then comes the "say what?", non-explanatory ending, and it all goes to pieces. (**1/2)