'Don't Sleep' drew me into seeing it, with a cool poster/cover, an slightly intriguing but very derivative premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

It is sadly however yet another film seen recently, hence some reiteration because the exact same strengths and flaws are here present in those films, that to me was incredibly disappointing considering its potential which it doesn't do anywhere near enough with. 'Don't Sleep' is terrible, with a plethora of problems (huge ones too) and doesn't do enough with its potential, which was hardly small. There is next to nothing to recommend and it is a sleeper.

Lets start with the sole positive. The scenery is atmospheric and spooky.

Unfortunately, it is not done justice by the rather direct to video schlocky way it's shot and edited, it was very clear that the film was made in a rush with no care or enthusiasm.

Going on further to the negatives, the story does feel paper thin, disjointed and over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their annoying and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrates. Especially the best friend who is just as annoying as that squeaking door mentioned previously.

Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The effects are ropy at best, the sound quality is obvious and utilised cheaply (being too loud in the build ups and people's reactions) and it's best not mentioning the uniformly lumbering and histrionic acting. It even gets the worst out of Cary Elwes, an actor who to me is generally watchable.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling, with lots of clichés and no depth whatsoever, while the pace goes to a standstill very quickly and drags on forever with very little going on worth caring about, never recovering. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness, a lot of dumb and vague moments and explanations and the lack of tension and suspense. Would not have minded the lack of originality (the film is extremely derivative and in a dumbed and watered down way) if the story and atmosphere were at least alright in execution, in reality they were both dreadfully done.

A lot of 'Don't Sleep' has underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations, while too many of the things to make you jump or shocked are far from creative or scary and are pretty tame. The ending makes the film finish on an incomplete and confused whimper, in fact it is not really an ending at all.

There is not enough threat here and what there is of it tends to be used poorly, while the psychological elements are unimaginative and are more odd than scary, completely failing to show any sense of horror. Some badly sagging momentum too. The direction is leaden, got the sense their heart was not in it, and the music doesn't really fit.

Concluding, near-irredeemably awful. 1/10 Bethany Cox

This movie had me lured in by the DVD cover, the fact that it is a horror movie and also because Cary Elwes was in it.

I was in for a rude awakening of a surprise.

"Don't Sleep" is weighed down by an incredibly slow paced and pointless storyline. It had potential at the start, but lost its momentum about halfway through.

In fact, the movie was so boring and uneventful that I gave up when there was just 15 minutes left of the movie.

It should be mentioned that they had a rather good cast of talents to perform in the movie. Although this was but adequate acting, because the actors and actresses were having almost nothing to work with in terms of script and plot.

All in all, don't bother with "Don't Sleep" if you like a proper horror movie to keep you entertained. And I guess the title of the movie actually was more of a plea from the writer and director than it was an actual title.

Of all the wacky ideas put forth by this movie, its greatest flaw is that it is insufferably boring. It doesn't even try to be original for much of its run time, relying on every Smalltown, USA hot young couple moving to a new house horror movie cliché so blatantly that every single jump scare is laughable. You see everything coming, and they kill the dog, so that's an immediate strike against this film.

The main character guy whose name I completely forgot it was so forgettable was apparently demon possessed or something as a child, and had to rely on extreme therapy from a doctor guy and now he's a supposedly well adjusted adult. Except he's a complete and utter asshole and douchebag, which this seems to be unrelated to his demon problems.

drifting drearily along this boring slog, a random demon kid in a hoodie appears and... beats up people. that's literally all he does. He beats up an old man so badly the old man starts freaking out and jibbering incoherently, then commits suicide while angrily defying the demon kid who watches him. Then the main character guy gets beat up by the demon kid.

Then a whole lot of basically nothing happens, and the main character guy has an irrational freakout at his old doctor on learning that he still contacts his mother to discuss him and his case. He then also starts arbitrarily harassing his girlfriend and acting needlessly paranoid about... nothing in particular. He's just running around screaming and cursing at nobody and nothing while overly dramatic music tries to tie this to the demon kid who beats people up, or maybe he's being re-haunted by the demon, or maybe he is the demon kid.

None of this makes any sense, and by the time we reach the end, they throw in a wacky, screwball-esque twist. At some point early in the movie, completely out of nowhere, they bring up a story about a fisherman who went on Crusade in medieval times, and when he came back, his wife killed herself because she was raped repeatedly.

That story suddenly comes back as it's revealed the main character guy was that fisherman crusader, and his girlfriend was the wife who got raped, and apparently she got raped by some manner of demon thing that turned her immortal, and she spent the next millennium either waiting for him to be reborn, or trying to find him after he wandered off or something.

Then the movie ends, with its end credits overlaid with some incredibly awful romance pop songs after the movie spent about 95% of its run time being the exact opposite of a romantic movie.