We’ve run into a real string of bad movies lately, haven’t we? Not that I thought Parasomnia was going to be any different, and not that you haven’t come to expect bad movie write-ups from me, but when you hoe the low budget road, there’s usually some awesome surprises waiting for you. Besides, this one was written and directed by William Malone, the same dude who did House on Haunted Hill and Feardotcom (yeah, okay, also not great but at least these were legitimate theatrical releases and starred people like Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, and Stephen Dorff), so I suppose one could gleam a glimmer of horror hope from this one. But all hope was quickly dashed and there weren’t any surprises waiting for me. Only a mundane, low budget fantasy lost in a shitty dream world of love, blood, and madness.

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Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

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This film is a dramatization of events that occurred October 1st through the 9th of 2000, in the Northern Alaskan town of Nome. To better explain the events of this story, the director has included actual archived footage throughout the film…Every dramatized scene in this movie is supported by either archived audio, video or as it was related by Dr. Tyler during extensive interviews with the director. In the end, what you believe is yours to decide. Please be advised that some of what you’re about to see is extremely disturbing.

That’s Milla Jovovich at the beginning of The Fourth Kind, breaking the wall in order to pull us into a strange world of psychological fury and alien abductions. Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, whose work as a psychologist treating abducted patients is documented in this movie through, as the intro suggests, actual video and audio shot by Dr. Tyler during her sessions and actor-portrayed dramatizations, kind of like what you used to get on shows like Unsolved Mysteries or Rescue 911. Only there’s no Stack, no Shatner, but the search for the truth is pretty much the same.

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