Stephen King is known for his horror movies, sometimes giving you the creepy crawlies with works like IT (1990) or pure tension like The Shining (1980), but Sleepwalkers (1992) is not a movie that I could quickly pinpoint into the emotion that it conjures in its viewers.
My counterpart to these reviews, my girlfriend, Jessica, and I sometimes would rather not spend too long scrolling Netflix or whatever other streaming service to find what to watch, and sometimes that may just be because we are looking for something to watch at 1 a.m., like the situation we found ourselves in in this particular scenario. There was no “battling” for the remote with this one; we simply chose Sleepwalkers and pressed play.
I was not too familiar with Stephen King movies, and believe I have seen nothing more than IT (2017), so I did not know what to expect coming into this movie outside of the description we were given by Netflix, “In a small Midwestern town, a teenage virgin becomes the target of new arrivals Mary Brady and her son, who aren’t what they appear to be;” a rather vague description, but certainly one that sparks interest. Jessica was a bit more familiar with King’s work in terms of his films, and was very excited to watch this movie as she had never heard of it before.
The film opens with the discovery of a young woman’s body in a house that appears deserted. Not much detail is given outside of this, and suddenly the title card is flashed on screen with a loud thunderous bang occurring, “how strange,” says Jessica.
At this point, I wasn’t too sure what was at hand. The opening scene was certainly trying to serve as exposition for us, but it left me with more questions than answers. Why was this girl found here? Why did she appear to be in such an advanced state of decay? What do “sleepwalkers” have to do with this?
Charles and Mary, a son and mother duo, are introduced to us now. An incestual relationship is quickly recognizable, and I am reminded not so suddenly that this movie is taking place in the early 90s. A peck is shared between the two after Charles says he might go on a date with a girl who works at the movie theater (like what?), and he then carries his mother up into a bedroom and slams the door (double what??).
That’s all just the tip of the iceberg; Charles and Mary once again share an exchange of kisses after Charles meets our main girl, Tanya. Mary begs Charles to return the virgin Tanya home, stating that she is deeply famished and needs Tanya’s life energy.
This film continues to follow the incestual relationship between the mother and son several times. To round it out, the two exchange kisses with one another again, followed by Charles being physically abused by his mother, then held against her chest, and then, a sex scene! I truly believe this part of the movie, perhaps the most unforgettable (unfortunately), is just someone’s fantasies come to life.
Charles continues his conquest of Tanya for about half the film until he is ultimately taken out by a cat attacking him. These “sleepwalkers” have a weakness to cats, but it is never explained why. Tanya can call the police during this attack and return home safely.
After Charles is taken out, the film’s last twenty minutes consist of Mary breaking into Tanya’s house, seemingly murdering her parents, blowing up two police cars by shooting them with a pistol once each (must be one of her powers), and driving Tanya back to her own house to use her to heal Charles.
Tanya gauges Charles’ eyes out after he turns into his sleepwalker form, seemingly killing him. The sheriff shows up to save her, but not before Mary can turn into a sleepwalker as well. He’s tossed aside and lands on a bear trap, another death. A gang of about 30 cats suddenly shows up to murder Mary after this, causing her to catch on fire! Enter the credits!!
I don’t have much more to say about this film, and would recommend it to those who like their popcorn flicks. It’s more silly than scary, although I don’t believe it is intentionally going this route. The plot is all over the place, and the incestual mother-son relationship seems like a writer’s fantasy put to film, certainly being the part of the movie that I will remember the most.
Jessica’s review certainly differs from mine in certain areas, as well as being similar in others. It is as follows: “So my first impression of this movie was that I was very excited to watch it when Cyrus brought it up because I really like the Stephen King movies that I have seen. I’ve never read his books, though, but I know he has a lot of very outlandish ideas, and he’ll do thrillers and a lot of horror or scary things, and I like that kind of vibe when it comes to movies, so I was excited to watch this movie.
When I thought of sleepwalkers, though, I thought of something zombie-related, especially because that’s something Cyrus likes as well, so I figured that would be similar to what we’d be watching, but I was very surprised as far as what came to be of the movie within the first few minutes.
One part that caught me off guard was the son and the mom were literally kissing, and I was like oh! I didn’t know that we were doing incest here.
I think Tanya was really pretty and that she’s super sweet, and she genuinely wants to have a connection with Charles, so I kind of set myself up, thinking that she was gonna die. I should’ve known that she wasn’t gonna die because she was the main character, and I’m glad she didn’t die. I think I would’ve had a very different opinion of the movie if she did, mainly because I liked her acting, and again, I have a little bit of bias because I thought she was pretty and I wanted them to actually work out, but of course, nope.
I also thought it was so unique that the fear the sleepwalkers have was cats, and that there were cats sort of throughout the movie to kind of emphasize the fear that they had. I thought that was super different, and I thought it was also kind of silly, as something that the sleepwalkers literally eat people and attack them, but they’re scared of cats. I thought that was kind of strange and that it didn’t make much sense, but it made the movie interesting for sure.
But overall, I like the movie, and I would give it four out of five stars. It’s an older movie as well, and I was very surprised and excited that there was Stephen King on Netflix because I saw some stuff from him on Netflix before, but not too much, and I actually never heard of this movie.”
To wrap up our review as a couple, I would say that the dichotomy of our reviews spells it out quite well. This movie was certainly more Jessica’s lingo, despite the fact that she was not the one who discovered it. I would recommend it as the type of movie you throw on late at night when you don’t really want to think about what you’re watching. Jess rated the movie four stars out of five, and I’ll go with two, bringing another three-star rating to our list.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
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