Great Film overall

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Best movie of this year hands down!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There was a great idea for 'The Curse of Sleeping Beauty', one of the more intriguing ones for a less-than-high-budget film, and there was a good, or at least halfway decent, film in it somewhere that had great potential to come out and should have done.Which is why it is so frustrating and such a big shame that 'The Curse of Sleeping Beauty' was so disjointed and uneven, as someone who was really rooting for the film to work. Do have to agree with the general consensus that 'The Curse of Sleeping Beauty' started off well and promisingly, was really thinking that it would be surprisingly good, but fell apart completely in the second half and kept getting worse. There are definitely far worse wastes of potential and good concepts, but 'The Curse of Sleeping Beauty' was definitely a definition of a waste of potential and a waste of a great idea.It, as aforementioned, starts off well. Throughout the production values generally were atmospherically Gothic and nicely shot with eerie make-up. The music also has a haunting eeriness that doesn't feel intrusive, one-note or repetitive. Mostly the acting was better than average, having seen some very bad to terrible acting in modest to low budget films recently so that was refreshing. Atmosphere generated is genuinely creepy, wonderful mysterious and suspenseful going at a deliberate but assured pace. Sadly, again as already said, the second half sees 'The Curse of Sleeping Beauty' falling apart. And not just slightly, we're talking significantly. Not that the film was perfect already. There was some choppy editing, cheap costuming and Ethan Peck doesn't always look comfortable or engaged in his role. Really, it is frustrating that the more the second half progressed, the duller, more confused, more clichéd and more predictable it got, and the mystery, creepiness and suspense got lost and instead was replaced by dreariness, ridiculousness and a draggy pace. All capped off by an ending that was far too abrupt and incomplete. Overall, good first half, disappointing second half with a bad non-event ending. 5/10 Bethany Cox

The actors wern't terrible the script not too bad but the director(s) should be hung by their thumbs till they drop off. Good grief what a heavy handed attempt at spooky..No lighting... half the time the screen is so dark you can hardly tell what you are looking at..even when He goes to the courthouse to look something up they have never heard of florescents but only have tiny windows and tiny lamps. This is supposed to add atmosphere? The girl whispers her way through her dialog and our hero mutters..I had the sound cranked all the way up but if it wasn't for closed captioning I wouldn't have had a clue as to what they were saying. Terrible ending too..No one should ever let them near a movie again. This could have been a decent movie if there had been a good director in charge.

Despite what the title suggests, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty isn't a "re-imagination" of the classic fairy-tale, but an adaptation of a "web comic" created by Everette Hartsoe (which I have never read), which was partially inspired by the tale Little Briar Rose, by the Grimm Brothers... also known as Sleeping Beauty. Mmh... after all, I think it is in fact a "re-imagination" of the fairy-tale. Anyway, there's a sleeping woman at the center of the movie, and a main character with the mission to awake her. But there's also a demon with a female voice, sinister apparitions inside the abandoned mansion and an inexplicable abundance of mannequins which occasionally display signs of life. Despite such a far-fetched premise, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty starts decently, with a well raised mystery, while director Pearry Reginald Teo (of whom I had only seen the ambitious but failed science fiction movie The Gene Generation) lets the narrative flow organically, at the same time he shows an interesting visual style. Unfortunately, the screenplay loses focus and consistency after half an hour, when it adds new variables, such as the hateful hacker/comic relief who must translate a document written on an unknown language; and an "expert" in paranormal affairs. I guess I understand what screenwriter Josh Nadler was trying to do with the latter character (a kind of a paranormal Doc Brown), but instead of bringing him personality, he only highlighted the foolishness behind the theories and conclusions of the specialist. It's a pity that The Curse of Sleeping Beauty ended up being an unsatisfactory film, because it showed some promise during the beginning. The problem is that the screenplay quickly crumbles, and that made me lose any interest. Having said that, I will keep expecting Teo's future films with interest; the movies I have seen from him haven't been good due to their poor screenplays, but he obviously has vision and narrative abilities which could be exploited with better written stories and more resources. For the rest, The Curse of Sleeping Beauty is another good reason to leave fairy- tales in peace, unless author Neil Gaiman is involved.

This movie has a very interesting take on the various versions of the Sleeping Beauty story. It even references the Brothers Grimm version 'Briar Rose'. It is obviously working with a low budget and is very cheesy throughout. However, unlike other viewers, I feel that it pretty much explained everything; it was just very quick, rushed and could be easily missed. For those who are a little confused and are reading these reviews for a bit of clarification on some parts of the movie: the curse came about because Thomas' ancestors sacrificed a virgin to a version of Satan or a very powerful demon. The sacrificed woman became the vessel for the evil god/demon to enter this world and bring about the apocalypse. Apparently good djinn worked together to keep the woman asleep, which in turn kept the evil god/demon imprisoned. Because of the evil act of sacrificing the virgin to the evil god/demon, the Kaiser bloodline men were born with demons inside them. Presumably, they performed the sacrifice to get some sort of power but in fact were really opening themselves up to be the servants of the god/demon. The Kaiser men were bound to the imprisoned god/demon, and so could not leave the house. Maybe they knew the full truth, maybe not. Most likely not, since the djinn were necessary to guard the sleeping god/demon to keep one of them from awakening it. Since Thomas had virtually no knowledge of any of it, all he could do was go with what he was being told. He thought the Veiled Demon-djinn was evil and found a way to get to the woman and awaken her. He had no way of knowing that she was not a sleeping woman under a curse and that he was the one who was cursed. Therefore, he freed the god/demon and it in turn, freed the generations of demons that had been stored in his bloodline and proceeded to begin the apocalypse. This would be an awesome movie to be redone by a more skilled writer/director/crew/etc and be more fully fleshed out and explored. This movie is worth watching for the interesting story.