Sleepwalker (2017) – on UK Netflix

A woman with sleeping problems joins a medical programme and starts waking up in alternative realities.

I’d never heard of it so I had no idea if it was going to explain its mysteries, or if it was not even going to attempt to do so. For once it’s a weird movie that has a proper story that reaches the end without resorting to random weird **** that doesn’t mean much of anything. It keeps it together and tells the one joined up genuine story from start to end. The final overall explanation was clichéd and deeply unremarkable but it was acceptable, and they added in other revelations that were mildly original. I give it a big thumbs up for just getting to the end with coherence so a competent explanation is just a cherry on top.

It is very reminiscent of David Lynch but without the overt artiness. The upside to the less arty nature of the film is that the story is told with a good pace and conventional plotting. Conventional storytelling might be a little prosaically plodding but it’s generally more satisfying for the end viewer. The downside is that it lacks the flamboyant off the wall weirdness and higher artistic ambition of Lynch so the movie lacks a grandiose or idiosyncratic soul.

I have a strong desire to watch it again. I thought it was a satisfying movie that didn’t annoy with unnecessary obtuseness or self-indulgent arty sequences. It’s an obtuse art movie for people who don’t like obtuse art movies. Also for fans of David Lynch as it deals with confused identities and fugue mental states like in Mulholland Drive (2001) and Lost Highway (1997). If you like this also check out Vanilla Sky (2001), The Good Night (2007 and on UK Netflix) and Possible Worlds (2000).

I strongly recommend giving this a shot.

10 days later:

I watched it again.

It held up to the scrutiny of a fairly swift second viewing. I enjoyed the film and consider it to be far more interesting than its obscurity and weak reviews would suggest. This is an interesting movie that doesn’t abuse the audience with cryptic game playing. It starts confusing but it ends with a fair amount of clarity. It’s arty in its story ideas but not in its execution. I for one think its unpretentious nature is a big plus point. I guess this landed the movie in a commercially weak place as it was too challenging for the mainstream (without lots of expensive advertising to butter up the masses) and not arty enough for the art house crowd. I noticed that at the end the film is copyrighted 2015 so it appears to be have been sitting unreleased for two years by MGM (the distributor but not the makers of the film). I can’t find the DVD on Amazon. This suggests that it didn’t even receive a region 1 American DVD release. Instead it seems to have played a few film festivals, was then released straight to iTunes as a digital download and then turned up on Netflix. The film deserved better. It’s exactly the type of oddball cult film that Arrow Video should be releasing on Blu-Ray (with a new, much less generic title and a striking piece of cover artwork).

My theory of what is happening in the film made sense on this second viewing. There is room for doubt as there are a few moments that don’t 100% fit but nothing contradicts my understanding too much. The ending does not feel open-ended to me. It clearly states and depicts certain events at the end with little room for ambiguity. It’s not particularly subtle*. A few details don’t add to the final explanation but I find it very easy to satisfyingly consider them to be moments of random dream illogicality**.

I like this film and strongly recommend it. It’s no masterpiece so I don’t want to oversell it but I don’t think it will waste your time. It’s maybe not arty enough to rival the very similar Mullholland Drive (2001) but it’s probably a more entertaining film, plus it’s short at less than 90 minutes which is rarely a bad thing.

VERY BIG SPOILERS:
I think people overthink it and assume it’s a complex movie with different levels of reality and ways of reading it. I don’t. I simply think the whole film is the dreams of a woman in a coma. The only real world moment is the coma hospital. It’s about a woman who shot herself after killing her married lover and she is now struggling to remember her real identity as she’s become confused and initially believes herself to be the wife instead of the lover. It’s basically the exact same plot as Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. A reading of that film is that it’s the dreams of a dying woman who has shot herself after she’s arranged the assassination of her lover. She idealises the relationship and tries to forget the reality of what she had done but eventually the truth comes back to her. Mulholland Drive is confusing, incoherent and audience unfriendly (i.e. arty cryptic nonsense) while Sleepwalker is more straightforward and explicitly states what’s going on and leaves little to interpretation.

* She looks at her picture in her ‘husband’s’ office and says, ‘This doesn’t even look like me.’ The professor is teaching a class about how love is a form of bipolar disorder and messes up the chemicals in the brain. The librarian explains that selective retrograde amnesia could be caused by trauma to the brain. There is what looks like a Humpty Dumpty cuddly toy in her living room. The attacks by the (narratively redundant) stalker always involve attempts to suffocate her, which are obviously her dream interpretation of her sleep apnoea attacks.

** The woman whose house she keeps waking up in and seems to be accidentally stalking doesn’t seems to have much to do with the climax. It’s not explicitly stated but I always just assumed she was the real wife of the deceased author and this (rather muddled and unhelpful) section was just random weird dream stuff. Perhaps it was brought on by guilt. There might be more going on here in this tiny subplot but I’m buggered if I can explain it in any other way.

I’m not crazy about the last shot and line of dialogue in the film. It suggests the story is going in a never ending loop of forgetting and remembering. Looping stories feel like a big cliché.

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