Simply Perfect

Simply A Masterpiece

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Amateur movies aren't always bad, but mostly they are. 'The sleeper' does have its upsides, but director Justin Russell has a lot to learn. There are plenty of older slasher movies that could be named as an inspiration for this ('Black Christmas', 'Friday the 13th' - the originals, of course), but the retro horror movie 'The house of the devil', by Ti West, may have inspired Russell very much as well. The walking around on campus, the stretching of the suspense, the somewhat off-handed disco dancing scene and the basketball scene, the in your face (pun intended) gore, it's all there. But where Ti West succeeded in telling a story, building up to a climax and capturing the right atmosphere, and energy, ánd gore (here it is only incidentally pretty good), Russell fails mostly.The cast does not help much here, either. The killer has potential, but ultimately is not nearly iconic. The girls, the cop(s), the housemother, none of them are truly convincing, except when for instance Riana Ballo as Stacy gets into a swimsuit (big continuity error there, when she leaves her top with her lover boy and minutes later walks around with the top on)... some tasty nudity always works, but there is not much of that here. Maybe Brittany Belland had the right looks, but she was still unconvincing.Still, Russell does achieve some atmosphere at times, with a lot of nice camera angles and a decent soundtrack, but that is not nearly enough for a good movie.A very small 4 out of 10.

The Sleeper is one of the WORST movies I've ever seen! Everything about is horrible ...... lame acting, bad script, non-existent explanations. It's almost as if some child wrote the script and directed the movie! Even if it was a low budget movie, it's no excuse for it to be so awful. A lot of girls and boys die, but no one in the community even discovers any of the bodies even if some of them are in public places. There's not even a single bit of info on the killer's past or why he kills. There is no redeeming feature in the movie at all. If you watch it till the end, you might even feel like throwing rotten tomatoes or rotten eggs at the screen! Giving even 1/10 is an act of mercy.

The Sleeper wanted to strongly look and feel like an early 80's film and in my view failed to achieve this for the reasons below: The opening shot/credit scene was actually well done and had some added visual noise effects and this in turn DID give the film the look and feel of something I would have seen on VHS back in those early days of the 80's. However, after the main credits are over it changes and not for the better. One reviewer summed it up in saying the film quality looks too "polished". It clearly was shot on some sort of digital film and no further noise or "grindhouse" look was added. In turn what this did is present the film in the era and style that this strongly gives the impression of—an early 1990s indie feature. Everything from the shot setups and angles to the acting screamed of 1990s indie. This is not entirely a bad thing mind you, but clearly a long shot from the 80's feel this wanted to be. In fact had the opening cue card read "1991" instead of "1981" it would have worked better. The director/writers also blatantly have a strong love for the 1970's film Black Christmas (as do I), as many similar shots, scenery and score music are almost copied from that filmIn the end I cannot say this is the worst thing I have seen, but definitely far from the best and far from what I was hoping it would be. The film is screaming for a fan edit as some of the subtle changes that you could do would fix the film immensely (such as never showing the killer's face, it would have been much better had his face been hiding in the shadows or even wearing a mask), etc and so on.I think what is actually working for the film is the nice DVD and VHS combo package they offer. The cover art is great and just for that fact alone might be worth the purchase for those VHS collectors still out thereUPDATE::::A short time back I had written a review for this film (which you just read above). I also bought the DVD/VHS combo box for it. At that time I had not watched the VHS version and I just want to say now I wish I did.Most of the issues aside from the script and such revolved around the film looking too polished and clean. It was obvious that going by the DVD/VHS combo box art work as well as the opening credits for the film that they wanted the viewer to have that "old film on VHS look". This is where that tape comes in. The VHS tape version that comes with this is BEAUITFULLY rendered and amazingly emulates an old VHS tape. This is not grindhouse type of effects, but rather actual old analog tape noise and wear that you would normally see on older/highly rented VHS tape. From the slight color bleeding to the white lines that go across the screen, as well as the pan/scan picture that you could tell came from a widescreen print. THIS IS HOW the intent of what they were trying to do really came across and it did not detract from the film, but rather added to it. I enjoyed the film much more than before. In fact it was done so well that you could no longer tell the movie was shot on digital, but more so resembles actual film. That format view works very well for the overall presentation. Also (and ironically) switching the sound from hi-fi stereo to mono really made the levels jump (usually it is the opposite) and it blended in everything perfectly.WHY OH WHY the makers of the film did not choose to release this as the final version for the DVD is beyond me. The perfect looking clean cut that is used for the DVD really does no justice for the film at all. It was more so like a pre-final release and the VHS version being what the film should have been. So if you did not like the film, but do have access to the VHS version, I would say give the film another chance and watch that edition instead. It really makes a wonderful jump in the end and for the better

If you are not a fan of micro-budget flicks stay away, if you don't like slasher flicks also stay away. That being said, this was a somewhat fun feature, I get what they were trying to do, but something was missing in my humble opinion.I thought the stalking scenes of the victims were pretty good and the FX equally good, however every time we had scenes with the detective I was bored and the ending was not as good as it could it been. I know probably due to budget budget constraints.It had the right ingredients: somewhat attractive cast, couple of cool death scenes, a sex scene (without nudity though), a creepy enough killer, bimbo skin (breast shots), some cool music and a totally unexpected musical number (which I did not hate like other reviewers).To me what didn't work were the ending and cop scenes. It could've used a little more screaming from the would be victims too (only 2 of the girls scream in the whole movie).