Cast: Naomi Watts, Jacob Tremblay, Charlie Heaton, Oliver Platt
Director: Farren Blackburn
Farren Blackburn may have hit a raw nerve with this film and it seems likely that he will face a string of ethical questions with regards to the ending of the story. The treatment of mentally ill patients in a story is a gray area, but this film makes the case very strange. It confuses the audience between psychological conditions arising out of traumatic experience and a psychopathic tendency.
Sadly it does not elaborate if the former leads to the latter, leaving the audience with the speculation of weather the psychologically challenged person is actually a psychopath from the inside. This speculation is more dangerous in the film because Mary Portman (Naomi Watts) a widowed mother is also a psychologist herself.
Stephen Portman (Charlie Heaton), gets paralysed in an accident in which he loses his dad too. He has been bed-ridden for almost 12 years now, a long enough time for Mary to find out about the truth, or she may be a really dumb psychologist who is trying really hard to enact this plot full of errors, so hard that she cannot sense the incestuous undertones of the story.
The setting of the story is also very suspicious. Mary lives with her paraplegic stepson far removed from civilisation. Why on earth would someone who lives alone with a paraplegic live in such a location where it might be impossible for someone to reach in times of need? When you have a patient, who cannot get up from the bed, you would rather want to be in someplace where medical help is easily available. Add to that the complete white landscape, as if the place is always full of snow. In essence, the setting of the story seems unusually contrived to make sure that the element of thrill and horror is added to it.
Another interesting character in the plot is Dr Wilson, who communicates intermittently with Mary about Stephen. With the vast experience and knowledge of two specialists we still end up with a psychological thriller-horror film that vastly undermines the positions of these specialists. It is only the performances of these actors that give any chance for the film to be endured. It is actually a weak plot but good actors theory that seems to work for the first half. Naomi Watts gets us real close to the vulnerabilities of character when someone is faced with such a situation; she is constantly deliberating on whether life is more difficult for Stephen and how death could be an easy release.
The sound score of the film is good; in the absence of the Foleys the horror would absolutely become absent.
In fact, this film could also be seen in terms of how sound is manipulated to create horror when there is actually none. There is also the use of jargon that helps to some extent in the film, but parasomnia, a sibling of insomnia, does not create much horror even in the way it sounds phonetically, and yes it does deserve a documentary for itself.
The only success that this film may claim to have is that all ghosts are nothing but the brain playing tricks due to parasomnia or a multiple other kind of situations. So the next time you think you are seeing ghosts or hearing strange creaky sounds or feel like you are being grabbed from nowhere, you are perhaps experiencing symptoms of parasomnia. The first thing to do in such situations is get some sleep, good sound sleep, and perhaps consult an expert after all no one is going to judge you for seeking help.
The writer is founder, Lightcube Film Society
