Worth: $13.00
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Cast:
Ellen Boscov, Bill Reick, Darryl Charles, Melanie Rosedale
Intro:
… a great concept with good jokes that, unfortunately, doesn’t quite stick the landing.
As well as sounding like the antithesis to those ‘Live Laugh Love’ wall plaques, Sleep. Walk. Kill is also the directorial debut of Justin Miller. Edgar (Bill Reick) is a down on his luck, fresh out of the box divorcee, whose days consist of getting up late and going to the house of his ex-wife, Ady (Samantha Russell), to harass her and her new boyfriend. To say his life has lost all meaning is perhaps an understatement.
When a continuous siren is heard in the sky over his neighbourhood for over two minutes, Edgar thinks nothing of it until his neighbour Lynn (Ashlee Rose Toll) turns up at his place covered in blood and trying to kill him. Turns out that the unearthly sound heard above has turned everyone into a mindless killer, but only after they’ve fallen asleep.
Soon, Edgar is on a mission to save Ady, find somewhere safe they can bunker down, along with his mum (Ellen Boscov) and wait for all this to blow over.
How’s that for a slice of fried gold! Yes, it’s fair to say that Miller owes a debt to the likes of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of Dead.
However, unlike 2019’s Shed of Dead, which made so many references to Shaun that it practically crowbarred itself into Wright’s universe, Sleep. Walk. Kill is thankfully very much its own beast. Miller works well within in the confines of his budget, shifting a large part of the film to a basement where Edgar, his family and neighbours work out the best way to escape their fates.
Miller’s idea of a zombie-like condition that only arises when you’re asleep is an interesting one. Instead of swarms of the undead, tiredness itself becomes the tool of terror that our heroes must outrun. Despite popping a bunch of pills and mainlining coffee, Miller obviously allows some characters to succumb to their fate in various ghoulish ways and often waking up too late to do anything about their misdeeds. The most effective is Edgar’s pregnant neighbour waking up to realise that she’s drunk several bottles of bleach and drain cleaner. It’s an unnerving scene that genuinely gets under your skin.
People drinking Domestos and other gruesome acts is perhaps where Miller almost derails his film. As well as being a zombie picture, Sleep. Walk. Kill is also a comedy horror and Miller paints his scenes in broad strokes of often absurdist humour. Take the film’s opening scene, where the aforementioned Lynn spends a quiet night in with her BDSM loving boyfriend who also sings in an Elvis baritone.
Humour has always been subjective, but here the laughter sometimes undercuts the horrors on screen. Such as when a character is dying horrifically, and Edgar’s uncle, thinking it’s a seizure, talks about being lactose intolerant but still loving milk. It’s not that the dialogue isn’t funny, but Miller frames the scene in such a way that it would be more effective without the Epipen jokes. Which is not a sentence you expect to have to write, ever.
Overall, Sleep. Walk. Kill is a great concept with good jokes that, unfortunately, doesn’t quite stick the landing. It’ll be interesting to see which direction Miller goes aesthetically with his next film.
