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Film: In Their Sleep
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 18
Running time: 79 mins
Director: Caroline du Potet & Éric du Potet
Starring: Anne Parillaud, Arthur Dupont, Thierry Frémont, Jean-Hugues Anglade
Genre: Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: France
Caroline and Eric du Potet's low-key horror/thriller In Their Sleep has been released with little fanfare through Optimum Home Entertainment. With so many similar, higher-profile films failing to surprise nowadays, can this little French film buck the trend and offer something memorable?
For Sarah (Anne Parillaud), life hasn't been the same since her adolescent son died a year ago. She's starting to experience heavy bouts of insomnia, and her DIY-centric husband has moved out of their new work-in-progress home in the countryside. Nowadays, Sarah buries herself in her work at the hospital, much to the chagrin of the supervising nurse who feels that she's unfit to continue her job.
On the way home from a night shift, Sarah is informed by a police roadblock that burglars have been operating in the area, taking advantage of the empty, isolated homes of those away on vacation. Further on down the road, a young man named Arthur (Arthur Dupont) darts out from the woods in front of Sarah's car. She knocks him down but he survives. Sarah takes Arthur back to her house to care for his wounds but quickly realises that Arthur is being pursued by the burglar (Thierry Frémont) that Sarah was warned about.
However, as events start to unfold, it becomes clear to Sarah that something else is going on, and that Arthur may not be all that he seems...
With a minimal cast and a handful of locations, In Their Sleep promises to be a taut, psychological gem, fine tuned with the kind of edge-of-your-seat tension granted to small productions whose meagre budget and resources sharpen the filmmakers' senses and make the most out of everything offered. Sadly, while In Their Sleep is a valiant attempt at such discourse, it doesn't quite succeed.
First time, sibling directors Caroline and Eric du Potet manage to coax pretty good performances from the three main actors. Parillaud excels as the grieving mother, the sole remnants of a family obliterated by tragedy, evincing vulnerability and sadness without the ham that would normally come with such a performance. Frémont also works well, despite being the most underwritten of the three. However, the real star of the show is Dupont, who is able to slip from innocent to potentially dangerous and back again with breathtaking ease.
The results should be tense and portentous, creating suspense worthy of Alfred Hitchcock, but sadly, the actors' efforts are called to serve a fundamentally predictable script that's also a little scattershot in places. Sarah's son's fatal accident at the start of the film ultimately bears very little importance to the events that happen later, except to explain why Sarah lives alone and why she suffers from insomnia. However, both factors feel somewhat moot as their absence probably wouldn't affect the progression of the story. Sarah's vulnerability, loneliness and insomnia, coupled with the fact that the film is called In Their Sleep, suggests the potential for Sarah's subjectivity to be significantly warped, plunging the protagonist into a reality questioning nightmare where her bereavement finally gets the better of her, however, this is not the case.
While that suggestion may sound somewhat derivative and expected, the narrative arc that's on display here – the seemingly innocent being found out for what he is – is perhaps even more derivative, climaxing with the usual finding out of the truth and subsequent chase around a dark and foreboding location; the woods, an isolated house – In Their Sleep has both. Speaking of isolated houses, perhaps the most contrived element of the film's script is Sarah “not getting around” (or words to that effect) to having a telephone installed, despite living there for over a year.
There is a distinct lack of tension throughout, which can partly be attributed to the script that's thin on the type of cat-and-mouse games that this style of narrative was built for, and partly attributed to the film's slim running time. Although it barely reaches 80 minutes, the film still feels overlong. It’s all the more noticeable as it stutters through its underwhelming climax. An overly long flashback towards the tail-end of the second act stalls any momentum that's been building up until then, which in turn muddles the film's perspective: whose story is this exactly?
Everything is competent from a visual standpoint. Pierre Cottereau's cinematography gets the job done nicely but with little flair. The darkly lit locations (including the hospital where Sarah works strangely enough) are convincingly realised apart from a few car shots that seem to have been filmed at dawn or done day-for-night, but this hardly detracts. Blood, gore and violence is fleeting and minimal, no doubt restrained by the film's low budget, but is sufficient to tell the story and used judicially.
In Their Sleep had potential, but ends up wanting. It's good qualities, such as the decent performances from the small yet nicely formed cast, are stuck serving a weak and formulaic story, which plods by with little resonance and emotional engagement. The results are watchable certainly, but not particularly memorable. All in all, In Their Sleep is a competent yet unremarkable debut feature. MP
Sarah (Anne Parillaud, Nikita) is struggling to come to terms with the death of her teenage son. Separated from her husband, she lives alone in an old house that she and her husband had planned to renovate.
One night, on her way back from work, she almost hits a young man, Arthur, a teenager the same age as her son. He is covered with blood and looks terrified. He claims to have been attacked by a mysterious assailant, a burglar who Arthur caught in the act. This man is now apparently determined to kill the boy.
Painfully reminded of her own child, Sarah feels moved. She decides to take care of him and brings him back to her house. Unfortunately, the man manages to find them, and Sarah will soon realise that all is not what it seems.
Film: In Their Sleep
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 18
Running time: 79 mins
Director: Caroline du Potet & Éric du Potet
Starring: Anne Parillaud, Arthur Dupont, Thierry Frémont, Jean-Hugues Anglade
Genre: Thriller
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: France
DVD Special Features:
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Trailer
Film: Stranded
Release date: 24th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Hugues Martin & Sandra Martin
Starring: Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, Thierry Fremont, Said Taghmaoui, Cyril Raffaelli, Aurelien Wiik
Genre: Action/Horror/War
Studio: E1
Format: DVD
Country: France/Morocco
Originally released under the title Djinns, this French debut from directing husband and wife partnership Hugues and Sandra Martin comes to DVD. The North African desert is the home of the Djinn, a group of invisible demons intent on protecting their home from a platoon of French soldiers on a rescue mission.
Michel (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) is young, nervous and accompanying a platoon of experienced soldiers in the Algerian desert as they track down a downed plane in the French-Algerian decolonisation war of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. He struggles to adapt to the overwhelming heat and his lack of experience means he is constantly playing catch-up to the grizzled, battle weary veterans. As they slowly make their way through the desert, they eventually make contact with their enemies and take hold of a small village nestled in the sand dunes.
All is not what it seems, however, as the young recruit begins to experience terrifying visions of near-invisible, demonic figures who are capable of possessing their victims, turning them into murderous vessels with only one thing on their minds. These creatures are a known threat to the locals, with the elder of the tribe appointed protector of the village. She claims to know why Michel can see these creatures, and as the soldiers are picked off one-by-one, it seems he is the only one with the power to protect his remaining comrades and the innocent inhabitants of the town…
Like many similarly themed films, such as Daniel Myrick’s The Objective or Michael J Basset’s Deathwatch, the ‘group of soldiers stalked by unseen threat’ has been done many times before. Unfortunately, the Martin’s effort is by no means a shining example of this type of film. It starts off interestingly, with a mysterious figure staggering down a desolate road handcuffed to a silver briefcase. This perfectly introduced the element of the unknown that accompanies the eerie desert. In fact, the desert is the most interesting element of the film. It is almost treated as a character in its own right, and its otherness offers much more tension and suspense than the Djinns ever could. It is obviously a dangerous place to be, and the soldier’s ordeal is exacerbated by the treacherous terrain.
The clichéd character types of most ‘squad’ movies are all present and correct, which adds a distinct sense of unoriginality to proceedings. Michel, the new recruit, clutches his treasured 8mm camera and continually bemoans his situation, while the handsome ladies man, Saria (Aurélien Wiik), befriends him and helps him along when he struggles. Malovitch (Matthias Van Khache) is the company’s resident veteran. Battle scarred and hard as nails, he ticks every box of the strong, silent type. However, despite being tired clichés, these characters are well played, and offer a decent dynamic as a group of men unwillingly thrown together and forced to face insurmountable odds.
Again, like many films of this type, the director unwisely chooses to reveal his monsters too early on, despite the fact that they are almost invisible. During the first forty-five minutes or so, the Martin’s manage to build a credible tension that works well with the slow pace and meandering conversations of the squad. That is until they discover the crashed plane and bodies of their comrades, and are met with a sandstorm and resistance from the local militia. Taking refuge in the dunes surrounding a small village, Michel begins to experience visions of the demons. Quite simply, the CGI used to create the transparent terrors are not good enough to warrant such a blatant reveal, and leave the audience feeling nonchalant towards their presence. The sense of tension and paranoia is, however, utilised quite effectively as the Djinns begin to possess the soldiers, and an interesting dynamic of not knowing who to trust takes over as members of the team are slowly turned into murderous psychopaths, one by one.
It is at this point, however, that the directors choose to undo their good work of building this sense of unease. The potential for decent horror is squandered with uninteresting climaxes to each member’s possession, and a far-fetched Macguffin involving Michel’s role as protector of the village. The entire second half of the film leaves a sense of flatness and unoriginality that disappoints after the promising start.
Undoubtedly, the most impressive element of the film is the cinematography, with the potentially unexciting desert coming to life with beautiful, sweeping long shorts of the massive dunes, and the isolated crew mere pinpoints on the screen as they traverse the treacherous sands. The opportunity for the directors to contrast this sense of openness with the claustrophobia of the confines of the tiny village is squandered, however, resulting in a sub-par creature feature that fails to ignite much excitement.
With Stranded, Hugues and Sandra Martin have somewhat missed the opportunity to present a worthy successor to other superior examples of similarly themed films. By no means a disaster, but still remarkably unremarkable, and too familiar to leave much of an impression. RB
In the desert, the enemy is not who you think!
It’s 1960 in the Algerian desert. A unit of elite soldiers are sent on a rescue mission in search of a missing aircraft. But they are not alone. Under constant attack by Algerian rebels, no-one anticipates that another, more deadly threat lies silently in wait.
A violent sand storm forces the troops to take refuge in an unchartered village deep in the desert. Taking its inhabitants and the rebels hostage, little do they know that the village is governed by a force far more powerful than any of them can imagine - and their invasion has violated their land.
Ignoring warnings to leave, as day turns to night, the evil enemy rises and as ranks are decimated one-by-one, they face the longest night of their lives.
Starring stunt legend Cyril Raffaelli (Die Hard 4.0, District 13) and Saïd Taghmaoui (G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra, Vantage Point).
Film: Stranded
Release date: 24th January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 114 mins
Director: Hugues Martin & Sandra Martin
Starring: Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, Thierry Fremont, Said Taghmaoui, Cyril Raffaelli, Aurelien Wiik
Genre: Action/Horror/War
Studio: E1
Format: DVD
Country: France/Morocco
