Watch Me Sleep (DVD Review)
Director
John WilliamsRelease Date(s)
2023 (April 21, 2026)Studio(s)
Call Sheet Media (Wild Eye Releasing)- Film/Program Grade: C
- Video Grade: D
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: B
Review
If you were to type into Google “slow boil, dry British indie horror film” Watch Me Sleep will probably be the first title that pops up. It is all those things to the nth degree—slow, British and indie. Also, it’s horror, so all be told, pretty fair. Sean, a very very angry man, learns that his mother has just passed away. Mom wasn’t his favorite person (best illustrated by him spitting into his mother’s coffin at her wake) and he’s more than happy she’s gone. We come to learn that she was quite abusive to Sean and may have been part of a cult, where Sean was potentially way more than physically abused. This has caused Sean to become an alcoholic and his friend group to turn his back on him. In town and at his mother’s old place, he knows he isn’t welcome, but he still decides to stick around so that he can have a camera installed into his mother’s coffin to watch her rot and confirm in his own mind that she is dead. What follows is a long episode of Tales from the Crypt with an ending from the previously unseen deleted scenes of Hereditary.
Wild Eye Releasing presents Watch Me Sleep exclusively on DVD, NTSC Region 0. It’s 16x9/1.78:1. The image quality isn’t great because so much of the film takes place in the dark, with black spaces holding secret horrors and you end up getting a lot of broken black with artifacts. It’s watchable, but a shame. Sound is Dolby Digital 2.0 and is fine. Extras include an image gallery with music, the original pitch trailer and the theatrical trailer, along with Wild Eye Releasing trailers for John Williams’ film Crispy’s Curse, Creatures of the Night, The Slayers and There’s Something in the Shadows.
Watch Me Sleep is more a showcase for actor Darren McAree who plays Sean. It’s a very good performance and elevates the material immensely. The film would have been better served as a short, or a prestige TV episode. As it sits, Watch Me Sleep is fine as a horror film, but not as good as the films that inspired it.
- Todd Doogan