On November 21, cinemas started showing the horror anthology «You Shall Not Sleep Tonight», which consists of six stories by different directors. In the review below, we will tell you more about each of them and state that this is just another piece of junk that takes up space in the Ukrainian box office.
Pluses:
Without the final credits, the movie lasts only an hour and 14 minutes, and this is a very, very powerful plus; it's one more or less normal story out of the six available, and the monster makeup is not bad;
Minuses:
It's too secondary, cheap, unimaginative, and generally bad;
«You Shall Not Sleep Tonight»
Genre horror anthology
Directors Guillermo Carbonell, Ben Deca, Julien Deca, Herve Freiburger, Laura Kulik, Filipe Melu, Luciano Montes de Oca
Starring Milo Webb, Agustin Olchese, Brenda Bonotto, Bruno Giacobbe, Dan Bronchinson, Aidan Nokic, Sarah Nokic, Anne Somoth, Nicole Alexandria, Aubriana Klingsmith, Joy Green (II), William Frederick Knight
Premiere movie theaters
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb
A little boy of 8, maybe 9, is afraid of a scary monster in the closet. The frightened child is helped by his father, who tries to calm his son down with a bedtime story and instructions that the boy is old enough to overcome his fears. Magically, this story will, very conditionally, resonate with several other eerie mini-plots that will appear before the viewer.
The local show program includes six short films in total. The authors of almost every one of them, and this is directly evident, are bending over backwards to pass off their unpretentious opuses as something more than secondary trinkets that no one will remember tomorrow. But their flirtations with hidden meanings or unexpected climaxes are ridiculous. It’s as if they’re filming not just monsters in the closet, but monsters in the closet with a pretense, and that doesn’t help the situation.
The film was produced by Black Mandala, a studio whose ambitions are mostly limited to low-budget, low-quality horror. Under its wing came a bunch of horror anthologies, such as «The Devil’s Tail
» (2021), «The Red Book Ritual» (2022) or «The 100 Candles Game: The Last Possession», which we had the pleasure of watching in theaters in July. In fact, the screenwriters Camilo Zaffora and Michael Kratzer, along with Nicholas Onetti as producers, have a relationship with the latter «You Shall Not Sleep Tonight». It seems that Black Mandala has firmly found its niche among the representatives of unbearable movie trash, but whether our box office needs it is a rhetorical question.
The first story, titled «Grains», directed by Herv Freiburger, is a kind of silent remake of the opening scene of the second «Jeepers Crippers». The same cornfield and children among the stalks with cobs (though in «Crippers» there was only one boy, and he was obviously older, which does not change the essence). The same father who does the housework and the dog whose barking warns of danger lurking between the abundant corn rows. And in the end, it is the same monster who has planned to take the children away for who knows what terrible purposes.
The viewer is then invited to meet the conventional protagonists — the frightened son and father mentioned in the synopsis. Their storyline in «You Shall Not Sleep Tonight» by director Luciano Montes de Oca is a through line and fills the space between the shorts. There’s nothing interesting here on a candlelit afternoon: the kid is afraid, his father tries to calm him down, sometimes delivering rather crass lines and actions.
Subsequently, we get a scene of level «a child hiding under the bed from a monster», where the latter is a burned man, which instantly reminds us of the recent «Azrael». The ending, of course, will explain where the monster’s legs come from, but it is definitely not capable of surprising.
The third arc, «The Last Seance» by Laura Kulik, appeals to the genre trope «séances and communication with the dead» and seems a little more interesting. However, the plot is satisfied with a few screamers from the average supernatural horror movie and an ominous but predictable ending, and that’s all.
The fourth, «The Plague» by Guillermo Carbonella, tells the story of an adult granddaughter who is tired of caring for her sick grandfather and is already planning to put him in a nursing home. However, the appearance of tough guys with rifles, which flashed in the opening scene as if from a noir movie, leads to unexpected consequences. Among the other, frankly, far from outstanding stories, this one seems to be the weakest and least meaningful.
The fifth short film, «Sleepwalk» Philippe Melo, is, on the contrary, the most interesting. It contrasts sharply with the gloom of most of its predecessors with its sun-drenched, bright landscapes. That is, the local road in the middle of desert cacti and the steadfast man with the appearance of a Texas sheriff are more likely to refer to «From Dusk Till Dawn» than to James Wan’s supernatural horror. The complete absence of paranormal infernality also works in favor of this contrast, as the story is based on the intrigue associated with an ordinary apple pie, not the desire to scare.
At some point, it may seem as if we are looking at an aged version of the main character «American Pie», so eager is the character to get hold of the bakery product. However, all joking aside, this is really the most sane story here.
Finally, the sixth and final installment of «My Blood» by brothers Ben and Julien Deck is clearly inspired by classic horror stories about exorcism. It also offers typical genre techniques. The filmmakers still try to add an interesting twist to the ending, but it doesn’t affect anything globally.
The result is a dubious collection of cheap, recycled and pretentious fragments that have been put together for some reason and called a movie. As a set of Halloween screen savers, it probably has the right to live. But as a full-fledged movie, even if it is a movie almanac, with a theatrical release and, accordingly, a calculation for money and audience attention, to quote a character from the TV series «Office», — «No, God! No, God, please no! No! No! Noooooo!».
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