movie: The Curse of Sleeping Beauty
Aug. 21st, 2016 09:07 pmA reclusive artist named Thomas keeps having dreams about, well, a sleeping beauty who he tries to kiss but can't. He used to be sociable but now just sits in his apartment all day, drawing pictures of the creepy house and sleeping girl in his dreams. Then he inherits a house from an uncle he's never heard of before that turns out to be the creepy house from his dreams. His uncle leaves him a letter that basically ays "Really sorry to do this to you kid, but it really sucks to be part of our family. Also, don't go to the lower levels. Ever. EVER. Trust me."
Naturally, he isn't there for five minutes before he's knocking on basement walls to find secret passages.
The house is full of creepy weird manequins. The local appraiser says that people keep disappearing and everything points to the house, but nothing is ever found. His new neighbor, Linda, tells him thatshe moved to town after the house took her brother, and that 53 people have been disappeared by the house over 125 years, so she's pretty sure it's cursed. OBVIOUSLY, Thomas and Linda go exploring the hidden tunnels and almost die from it.
I would have loved to see this movie get a good budget and a more experienced team (apparently the writer/director Pearry Teo, has done several other indie horror movies, but I haven't heard of them). The concept is there and a lot of the visual designs for the horror and fantasy elements could have been amazing with a good special effects budget. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't have what it needs to fulfill it's potential on any level. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some low budget indie SFF movies that I wished could get the full Hollywood treatment for the budget they needed to live up to their full potential, but still thought they did the best they could with what they had. That isn't what happened here. This movie is a half-hearted mess that threw up its hands in the last 5 minutes and decided not to write an ending in favor of sequel baiting for a sequel that will almost certainly never happen.