Waking Nightmare (2023)

Waking Nightmare (2023). Waking Nightmare: Directed by Stephen Joseph Craig, Brian Farmer. With Diane Franklin, David Naughton, Jamison Newlander, Shelley Regner. After a family doctor prescribes her Ambien to help with her sleepwalking, Jordan finds her condition getting progressively worse – and more dangerous.

“Suffering from debilitating sleepwalking issues, a woman trying to come to grips with it while staying at her parentsu0026#39; house becomes concerned when her behavior indicates the sleepwalking issues have brought her into a potential murder conspiracy and tries to find a way to stop it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis was an overall decent genre effort. Among the better elements here is the solid setup here making for a great starting point to everything. Making a big deal about the recent series of events she has regarding her friendsu0026#39; death and using that as a catalyst for sleepwalking issues and nightmares that present her as a threat to herself and her family is a fine way to go about this. Itu0026#39;s an intriguing series of storylines at play as the need to figure out the cause of these events once the ominous nature of it all gets brought up due to her constantly putting herself or others in danger through her sleepwalking antics. Once itu0026#39;s been established that sheu0026#39;s not normal and that thereu0026#39;s something going on, the film does manage to pick up somewhat towards the finale. Featuring some gruesome scenes where her sleepwalking antics bring about several chilling sequences of her coming across others and featuring not just brutal action, but some intriguing twists also emerge that keep this one going. These twists provide the kind of setup needed to launch into the kind of gruesome kills featured here which includes near torture-porn style presentation how it all comes about thatu0026#39;s quite enjoyable. These all give the film quite a lot to like for its positives. There are some issues with this one that do hold it back. One of its main drawbacks is the avantgarde inserts designed to allegedly showcase her deranged emotional state but come off as weird for the sake of weird. From washed-out colors, acid filters, animated figures, and other bizarre imagery adorns this whenever sheu0026#39;s in one of her episodes which is immensely unappealing, especially with the damaging soundtrack accompanying everything. The other factor with this one comes from the laid-back pacing where it takes way too long to spell out whatu0026#39;s going on as the main faces on whether sheu0026#39;s crazy or not so thereu0026#39;s not much in the way of action here which keeps everything low-key until then. These are the problematic factors.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eRated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.”