If you suffer from sleep paralysis, you know how debilitating and terrifying it can be. For many, a black shape creeps from the corner of the room and hovers by their bedside. Others might not see a figure at all, but rather a suffocating blanket of dread surrounding them. Writer/director Talo Silveyra excavates pure fear from the subconscious with his new film, Don’t Sleep Alone, playing at this year’s Panic Fest. Doused in trembling mood and sticky atmosphere, the feature doesn’t just flirt with the senses. It takes your hand and walks you straight into the abyss until a fresh hell immerses you.
Sami (Agustina Benavides) left the past behind. Truth be told, she hadn’t thought about it for a number of years. It’s only after her father’s suicide that she returns to her childhood home and reunites with her brother Mateo (Ignacio Pérez Cortés) and sister Erica (Paula Brasca). In confronting the truth, it’s only then that the siblings can reconcile, learn to love again, and forge a fresh relationship. But something won’t let them. During the first night, something sinister visits Sami and paralyzes her body. The things she sees, as she lies there in the cold darkness, unable to move, would send goosebumps down anyone’s spine.
The days tumble into the next like dominoes. For the life of her, Sami can’t understand why she’s being tormented. In one of her sleep paralysis fits, she witnesses her father’s death, and she instantly becomes convinced that he didn’t kill himself. An entity killed him. Her already tenuous relationship with Mateo and Erica careens into the ditch, particularly as Erica believes Sami to be saying these terrible things as a coping mechanism for not dealing with the past. Before long, the three siblings have a tough time countering Sami’s claims, and together, it’s up to them to finally bury their demons.
Silveyra pens a script so intensely personal that it seems to spill out from his very soul. Don’t Sleep Alone reuses the common sleep paralysis theme for a much deeper, darker, and more surreal perspective about relinquishing unprocessed pain, rekindling scarred relationships, and pretending that everything’s okay. You have to confront the hurt before it consumes you, or else you just might take down everyone in your close circle. It certainly helps to have an actor like Benavides tearing into the material and slipping into unruly misery with raw tenderness.
Strong character work characterizes a film that could have easily arrived limp and lifeless, but Talo Silveyra births a terror so dark that it’ll surely make an insomniac out of you. Don’t Sleep Alone is as much about the story as it is the evil emanating from somewhere deep inside the walls of Sami’s home. You can’t quite place it at first, and once it pounces, it exposes everything. Whatever you do: don’t sleep on this one.
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