Was a short workday so I decided to take a look at what new horrors Amazon Prime thinks I should see. Trusting Amazon Prime for movie picks is always a hit and miss but I do admit some of the offerings have surprised me.

The movie starts off in a children’s bedroom. A little boy and girl are asleep in their beds and we as the audience can hear a disembodied voice asking “you want play?” The boy wakes up and walks out of the bedroom talking to an unseen apparition. We catch glimpses of an ethereal shadow form following the boy. The disturbance wakes up the little girl who glances over at her brothers bed and see’s it’s vacant. She steps out into the hallway looking for her brother and a quick jumpscare of the boy turning a corner runs past the little girl to the end of the hall, which terminates at a window. An open window. The boy turns around and says he “wants to play” and as he looks back to his sister, who is frightened at this point exclaims “you’re sleepwalking again, I’m gonna tell mom,” we see an evil apparition with white glowing eyes standing behind her. She’s unaware and doesn’t see this. All the sudden the boy gets scared as he sees the hallway turning dark approaching him and frightfully starts backing up towards the window. He’s screaming “I don’t want to play I don’t want to play” and as he backs up towards the open window and falls out the girls simultaneous screams is all that’s seen and heard as the picture fades to black.

The word ‘nightmare’ is derived from the Olde English word ‘Mare’, a demon that torments people with horrifying dreams. Millions claim to encounter this demon while trapped in ‘sleep paralysis’, a state between wakefulness and sleep.

We get this edifying quote on the fade to black. I’d say it was informative had I not seen many other setups like this in the past. All I’m thinking is oh brother, why does it have to be children.

With the prelude over, we go into opening credits and the voices of various adults and children can be heard talking about their ‘sleep paralysis’ or nightmares. It’s implied that a psychiatrist or psychologist is recording these various “interviews” in a clinical setting and we hear the sound of a tape recorder clicking off at the end of all this. The opening credits clear off the screen and we enter the movie proper.

At this point one can gather this is probably going to be a movie about sleep paralysis however the prelude doesn’t play out like a “normal” sleep paralysis event. I also suffer from sleep paralysis but it no longer scares me as much (usually) as the paralysis portion is replaced by actually waking up pretty quick and I’ve never sleepwalked.

For the next few minutes of the movie we get some well disguised exposition. The little girl, Alice, from the beginning is all grown up now and she works at a hospital. Her specialty? That’s right, sleep disorders. We get some idea of her daily grind and as she’s sitting down and having a cup of coffee in the cafeteria. A nurse approaches her and lets her know her next appointment is here. Looking at her watch she mentions it’s a bit early. The nurse passes on to her that it’s a family appointment with mother, father, and two children, a boy and a girl. They’ve recently lost their youngest child and the family is having a tough go of it.

Our esteemed Doctor Alice meets with the family to discuss the nature of what’s currently going on and the focus is on sleep issues. At first our doctor assumes that it’s the male child that’s having the sleep/nightmare issue but the entire family looks haggard and on edge. Doctor Alice looks at her notes, seems a bit perplexed, and asks which one of the children are staying overnight in the observation room. The father with a forlorn and tired look exclaims, “all of us.”

Now I’m not sure if it’s an insurance thing but apparently after the talk with Doctor Alice the next scene is of the family at home getting ready for bed. What plays out next is an extremely tense scene. We see the daughter entering the kitchen from somewhere outside. As she turns to go into another room, we can see she’s carrying gardening shears. Mother is in the kitchen in delirium mode saying “daddy needs his smoothie, daddy needs his smoothie” as she cracks eggs into a blender, shells and all. As the daughter makes her way through the house mother can be seen turning on the uncapped blender and reaching in with her fingers. The daughter is moving towards the deceased child’s bedroom where the father can be seen sitting down and talking to an imaginary baby he has lovingly cusped in his arms. As he coo’s to the phantom baby the daughter moves into the room. The scene shifts to mother with her hand in the whirring blender pulling out a piece of banana and eating it as the blender keeps on with it’s monotonous droning. The scene shifts to the boy lying in bed with his eyes closed apparently in the grips of sleep paralysis and he’s saying over and over in his sleep, “don’t let it get me, don’t let it get me.” As the scene shifts again to the father and daughter we hear the sound of the gardening shears furiously working at something. The next scene shows the boy in the throes of a nightmare and we see the room darkening around him while a hideous shadow forms on the walla. All of the sudden the boy arches his back stiffly in his bed. The scene shifts to the daughter furiously cutting the heads off plush toy animals as the father stands up with imaginary baby in hand cooing softly to it.

Then the family dog starts barking and everyone finally wakes up from the full family sleepwalking scene reacting and very confused to find the state they are in. Dad quickly grabs the shears from the little girl. Mom finally snaps out of it right before blender mangling her hand we see the door to the boys room slowly closing as he continues to fit…

Man it was at this point that I started getting excited about the movie. This intense scene was very well played out but would easily pass PG-13 muster.

That’s all I’m going to give you of Slumber. This is as far as I’ve made it into the movie and now I have to watch the rest of it. I’m 20 minutes and 13 seconds into the movie but I’m committed now.

If you like what you’ve read so far, and this scene was enough to get me to watch the rest of the movie, Slumber might be something you’d enjoy. Maybe enjoy is the wrong word when describing horror’s with children, as I’ve raised children and get a lot of relief knowing this is all make believe, but sometimes there’s a point in a movie where you become enraptured in it and that was it.

Slumber is directed by Jonathan Hopkins. Written by Richard Hobley and Jonathan Hopkins. Featuring Maggie Q, Will Kemp, Sophia Wiseman, Honor Kneafsy, Grace Schneider and Lucas Bond. Slumber was released in 2017 and has a running time of 1 hour and 24 minutes. IMDb rating of 4.7/10. I personally would give the movie a 6.4.