Sleep Has Her House

...more an unforgettable experience than a film. It is nothing you just can watch with friends and chat and check your phone etc. I would strongly recommend to see it alone with no distraction and handle it a bit like a meditation. Give it it's time and stay tuned what your mind will show you!

Scott Barley's biggest and most ambitious project yet deliverers an entrancing experience that enkindles fascination as much as relaxation.

A film guided by the pacing of nature, letting the climate pass by, slowly revealing a story more akin to music, not by telling a concrete narrative but elaborating on mood and atmosphere ; as mysterious as it is wonderful, a place engulfed in darkness, yet surrounded by calming sounds of waterfalls, winds and leaves.

I am so surprised by just how much a few simple shots of nature can be this skilfully utilized, conveying the beauty and harshness of a forest in a truly unique way.

Mind-numbing think piece.

This kinda works just like hypnosis...it does its job only if you allow it, if you go with it. And you have to do a lot of preparation in order to work. You have to see this in pitch black, not during the day, but late at night. You have to let your mind wander and fill in the blanks. Basically, this is the reason I don't like it. It's a minimal effort from the director. He just crops up some barely visible stills (some with movement) with sound effects and you have to do the story, and make it on the spot. I get it. Some will like that.

The LB rating shows that this platform is filled with people who desperately try to find meaning in nothing, pretentious people. And Scott did this service for them. Those people finished all cinema and now try to search for meaning in anti-cinema, which this film clearly is. You can keep it.

This is worse than Last and First Men.

During the early moments of Sleep Has Her House, you get the feeling that something will eventually jump at you, but you quickly learn that this is not that kind of film. Sleep Has Her House is a film of extreme subjectivity as the viewer is concerned. With its sounds and images, it evokes emotions, ideas, and -most of all in my case- memories and wonderment.

It is composed of images that exist in a state of both motion and stillness at once, they seem to constantly expand and shrink. Objects and places slowly revealing themselves to you, except, is it really what you think it is? Images morphing into different things based on space, distance and light. But that's all just a description. What this work forces you to do, is to bring your own experience, and your own emotions to it. While the images and the sounds navigate you through them. There's a moment where it all goes to black, and stars slowly emerge from the darkness, alive and breathing, with beautiful and ethereal music, which suddenly cuts to what I perceive to be the heavens, driving me to shift my thinking to something higher, much higher than what I was bringing. And as soon as it lifted me, it dropped me back to it's pit. It's one of the most moving things I've ever seen in a film.

I know the filmmaker was partially inspired by Scott Walker and Grouper, and it's truly fascinating how the influence of those sound artists is obvious on the images of the film.

Sleep Has Her House doesn't aim to pass your time, but rather make you feel and live every minute of its running time. This is a great, highly experimental film, with a meticulous sound design that's inseparable from its images.

Director Scott Barley's unconventional approach may resonate more as a visual art installation than a traditional movie. The absence of a coherent storyline or traditional cinematic features might lead viewers to question its classification as a film. Rather, it seems to invite contemplation, encouraging audiences to engage with its abstract and atmospheric qualities, akin to an art piece in a gallery.

The film's deliberate use of darkness, grainy visuals, and subdued soundscape might not appeal to those seeking a typical cinematic experience. Its sparse imagery, including fleeting glimpses of nature like horses and water, invites interpretation and introspection, offering a different kind of cinematic encounter that might not be everyone's cup of tea.

In essence, "Sleep Has Her House" cannot be classed as a movie. It uses 1/5 of the screen and its departure from mainstream movie elements is better suited for those intrigued by experimental visual storytelling and open to unconventional artistic expressions.