Sleepless Beauty
Disclaimer- this is a Russian production dubbed into English. Unfortunately, subtitles were not done for the Russian chat text you see frequently throughout the film, so don’t be surprised if, like me, you are more than a little agitated by that. They couldn’t have at least subtitled the “Administrator” messages?
“Sleepless Beauty” is a horror movie in the “Saw” and “Hostel” vein- if those franchises turn you off, feel free to skip it. I have mixed feelings of that type of movie, and I have mixed feelings about “Sleepless Beauty.” Pavel Khvaleev’s film has an interesting premise, but paper-thin characters and exposition that feels hidden behind the Russian chat text that hasn’t been translated into English subtitles. We get enough of a sense of the story to follow it, but not enough to become invested in it. This is definitely a 1-and-done viewing experience for me, and that’s actually kind of a shame.
The film begins with a TV camera watching a speech when violence breaks out, and the speaker is shot. We then find Mila (Polina Davydova, dubbed by Jennifer Roberts) as she seems to be in one of the dankest pet stores imaginable to buy a fish. She gets what she needs, and takes it home, and is setting it up when she is assailed by a masked attacker. The next thing you know, she is in a dank room, alone, with only a chair and bucket near her. A camera is set up to track her, and she is told over the speaker that she is not to sleep, and she is then put through a series of tasks that are training her to be a killer.
The screenplay by Aleksandra Khvaleeva is as perfunctory and low on details as you could expect from any genre movie, let alone a horror movie. We don’t get much in the way of character development outside of some occasional glimpses of Mila’s parents talking to authorities and (I guess) private investigators about her disappearance, and we learn almost nothing about the people who have captured her other than they are known as Recreation. Their motives are simple, and their tactics are torture and using some surreal imagery to brainwash her for their purposes. We don’t really know the whys of it all, though, and that doesn’t help if you have a language barrier left undone like the aforementioned lack of subtitles. If I keep coming back to that, it’s because it does feel like a barrier to the storytelling in this film, which has been dubbed rather than in the original Russian with subtitles; why would you not subtitle at least some of the chat text, which is cut to constantly, if you’re going to dub the film into English? Would said subtitles have made much of a difference to the way the movie lands with me? Maybe not, but I would be willing to read them to find out for myself.
At 83 minutes, the film does not overstay its welcome, and there is some pretty good imagery in this, although if the thought of a woman being tortured by unknown individuals repels you, probably best to stay away. (It doesn’t get overly graphic in that department, however.) Unfortunately, the way it is being presented, it feels like I’m only getting a portion of the story. That’s disappointing.
