Parasomnia is a horror-thriller centered on a woman suffering from a medical condition that causes her to sleep her life away, waking briefly on rare occasions.

Written & Director: William Malone
Stars: Sean Young, Patrick Kilpatrick, Dylan Purcell, Cherilyn Wilson, Janet Tracy Keijser

Parasomnia is a horror movie thriller from back in 2008 with quite the impressive little cast. There’s at least one cameo in it that had me doing a double take. This thriller, horror, romance film is basically about a guy that finds a young women at psych ward who suffers from Parasomnia, a rare sleep disorder that causes the afflicted to basically sleep most of the time. It’s uncontrollable for the purposes of this movie.

Our male hero, Danny (Dylan Purcell) falls in love with Laura (Cherilyn Wilson) our sleeping beauty. He feels that she isn’t being treated well at the psych ward and basically kidnaps her. All would go well, but there’s a serial killer (Patrick Kilpatrick) that also has a thing for our young Laura. Even though he’s restrained in the psych ward he’s got some series psychic abilities that cause some serious situations for Danny and Laura.

What keeps this movie from being really good is that it’s really, really slow going. I liked the score, the music was subtle and I felt that it certainly raised the emotional level. But, a lot of the main characters actions just didn’t make sense to me. The main character, Danny did some pretty stupid things. They weren’t, screaming at the screen, “You’re an idiot! Don’t go in there!” stupid. Just some decisions he made that took me out of the story a bit because I kept thinking, “Dude, you’re not thinking this through. There’s a smarter way to do this.” So, the movie seemed to drag a bit for me. There just wasn’t a lot going on throughout the first half of the film.

The acting was good, a lot of good, a lot of well known character actors in this film as well as cult favorite Jeffrey Combs. In fact, he’s what mad me pick up the video. The lead actor Dylan Purcell who I haven’t seen before was a likable enough. And, his acting was very good. Really good subtle facial expressions that I thought captured a lot of moments and feelings very well. The female lead was played by newcomer at the time Cherilyn Wilson. In real life she is really beautiful yet the movie played down her looks I thought just a little and I think that actually helped to make the character a little more believable. Also, Patrick Kilpatrick was really good as the villain Byron Volpe. He’s good in everything he does. Great, great character actor.

The special effects were pretty good. The acting was good, it was an interesting story. It was just such a slow beginning and the character development wasn’t quite there for the leads. There’s a lot going for this film and I think it’s worth a watch if there’s nothing else you want to see more. So again, I am on the bubble with this one. The best I can say is that if you choose to watch it, I don’t think you’ll hate it. It’s quite possible that some of you will even like it. It just didn’t do it for me. But, give it a try and see what you think.