THE STORY:
Troubled sleeper, Thomas (Ethan Peck) inherits an old house from an uncle he never knew. In his dreams he encounters two entities, a sleeping beauty by the name of Briar Rose and a veiled demon. At the house he encounters Linda (Natalie Hall), a young woman in search of her brother who went missing there. Apparently his uncle’s home has a terrible past, and somehow its secrets, Briar Rose, the veiled demon and he are all connected...
Ah, what fresh hell is this? Although this movie is a considered improvement, had I known it was directed by the dude behind 2011’s painfully bad horror flick The Evil Inside, this little movie would’ve been sailing through the air towards the nearest bin bag faster than you could say, “Fuck that shit!”
Anyways… the main problem with The Curse of Sleeping Beauty is…Sleeping Beauty! Why is that part of it even necessary? For starters it plants expectations of a potentially epic scale that this project was clearly never going to live up to. I mean seriously. Once the big twist is out of the way, the movie very quickly reaches its conclusion at 80 minute mark, and instead of feeling like they’ve completed a competent horror fairy tale, it just feels like…they ran out of money…
Aside from the closing few seconds, the special effects are great. Very Silent Hill meets Hellboy. Briar’s costume design is pretty nifty. Add in the whole dream factor and you could be reminded of The Cell. Bruce Davison is in it! I’ve had a soft spot for him since his turn in Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem (2012). Ethan Peck as Thomas is pretty funny to watch as he appears to have consulted the Keanu Reeves school of acting for this role. Linda is a cutie that is easily likeable. So once she, Bruce, Ethan and her ex-boyfriend – an Asian tech wizard by the name of Daniel – band together to solve the curse, what the film actually creates – quite unintentionally – is a rather intriguing setup for a TV series. It is brief, but they do get some great chemistry going before it all goes to shit.
LAST WORDS:
There’s a lot to forgive here. Clearly they dreamt too big, which is never a crime. They use mannequins to rip-off Doctor Who’s weeping angel monsters, which I don’t care about as I’m not a big Who fan…anymore… And to be fair, the whole classic fairy tale meets horror has never really worked for anyone. At least not when you are focusing on one tale in particular.
Troubled sleeper, Thomas (Ethan Peck) inherits an old house from an uncle he never knew. In his dreams he encounters two entities, a sleeping beauty by the name of Briar Rose and a veiled demon. At the house he encounters Linda (Natalie Hall), a young woman in search of her brother who went missing there. Apparently his uncle’s home has a terrible past, and somehow its secrets, Briar Rose, the veiled demon and he are all connected...
Ah, what fresh hell is this? Although this movie is a considered improvement, had I known it was directed by the dude behind 2011’s painfully bad horror flick The Evil Inside, this little movie would’ve been sailing through the air towards the nearest bin bag faster than you could say, “Fuck that shit!”
Anyways… the main problem with The Curse of Sleeping Beauty is…Sleeping Beauty! Why is that part of it even necessary? For starters it plants expectations of a potentially epic scale that this project was clearly never going to live up to. I mean seriously. Once the big twist is out of the way, the movie very quickly reaches its conclusion at 80 minute mark, and instead of feeling like they’ve completed a competent horror fairy tale, it just feels like…they ran out of money…
Aside from the closing few seconds, the special effects are great. Very Silent Hill meets Hellboy. Briar’s costume design is pretty nifty. Add in the whole dream factor and you could be reminded of The Cell. Bruce Davison is in it! I’ve had a soft spot for him since his turn in Rob Zombie’s The Lords of Salem (2012). Ethan Peck as Thomas is pretty funny to watch as he appears to have consulted the Keanu Reeves school of acting for this role. Linda is a cutie that is easily likeable. So once she, Bruce, Ethan and her ex-boyfriend – an Asian tech wizard by the name of Daniel – band together to solve the curse, what the film actually creates – quite unintentionally – is a rather intriguing setup for a TV series. It is brief, but they do get some great chemistry going before it all goes to shit.
LAST WORDS:
There’s a lot to forgive here. Clearly they dreamt too big, which is never a crime. They use mannequins to rip-off Doctor Who’s weeping angel monsters, which I don’t care about as I’m not a big Who fan…anymore… And to be fair, the whole classic fairy tale meets horror has never really worked for anyone. At least not when you are focusing on one tale in particular.
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