X
- 1992
- R
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
- 1992
- R
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
Summary A mother-and-son team of strange supernatural creatures move to a small town to seek out a young virgin to feed on.
Directed By: Mick Garris
Written By: Stephen King
- 1992
- R
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
- 1992
- R
- Columbia Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
Sleepwalkers
38
7.6
Where to Watch
Summary A mother-and-son team of strange supernatural creatures move to a small town to seek out a young virgin to feed on.
Directed By: Mick Garris
Written By: Stephen King
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
38
25% Positive
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
25% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
50% Negative
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Unfavorable
Based on 12 Critic Reviews
38
25% Positive
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
25% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
50% Negative
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
Garris, filming mainly in a bobbing and weaving, hand-held camera style, keeps the scenes pared down to their functional essentials, wisely substituting speed for nuance. Sleepwalkers gets the job done. [13 Apr 1992, p.5C]
While Sleepwalkers fails spectacularly as a horror movie, it triumphs as a loopy camp comedy. Sleepwalkers gets crazier and crazier as it proceeds, which is saying something, as it starts out batshit insane.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 80 User Ratings
7.6
74% Positive
59 Ratings
59 Ratings
13% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
14% Negative
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 80 User Ratings
7.6
74% Positive
59 Ratings
59 Ratings
13% Mixed
10 Ratings
10 Ratings
14% Negative
11 Ratings
11 Ratings
An incestuous mother-and-son duo of soul **** werecats move to a small town in Indiana in order to feed on it's only virginal teenage girl. Featuring an original screenplay from Stephen King, Sleepwalkers has an interesting place in the author's filmography as it isn't an adaptation of his books or other stories. Hyper-violent and cheesy, the tone is more Maximum Overdrive than The Shining. A total trashy B-movie with uneven writing it may be, but thanks to some appropriate direction from Mick Garris (A frequent King collaborator) it manages to make the most of it's cheap gore effects and deliver some low-rent stimulation.
You catch glimpses of potential depth here and there. Like in the graveyard assault sequence that's very symbolic of ****. It never leaves the shallow end of the horror pool though. The aforementioned scene is punctuated with some one-the-nose jokes about consent that keeps the action firmly tongue-in-cheek. There's a nonsensical car chase, Alice Krige going on a rampage through town, and more ridiculous dialog than you can shake your head at. It's all a bunch of cheap thrills, but it's liberal with the blood and over the-top deaths so the silliness is a lot of fun.
Like I said, the writing was uneven. King came up with a lot of inventive scenarios, but the lore of his monsters is underdeveloped. You can see the familiar archetypes often found in his work, such as the sleazy teacher that tries to blackmail Brian Krause into sexual favors leading a suitably gruesome demise, but there's no character development. The dialog is pretty sharp though and the film is always ready with a joke. The early moments of Krause attempting to woo his next victim are pretty well-done. Although it's odd to see his character erratically flip-flop on his motives so much.
As a **** for cheap thrills I enjoyed this movie. It has them in spades. I think what really won me over though were the cats. Your average stray feline is a goofy weakness for a monster to have, but we got the baddest tabby of all time "Clovis" (Sparks) out of it so I won't complain too much. A straight up OG. There's even a unexpected tender moment with him in here. Who expected that? Overall, this is a stupid good time. If you like the other Stephen King B-movies then you'll like this as well.
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Sleepwalkers is badly plotted and unimaginatively conceived, though not without a number of seat-squirming scenes.
From the creature FX to the stilted dialogue, Sleepwalkers offers nothing new for horror fans to sink their collective fangs into.
Besides displaying a tin ear for dialogue, King stoops to such conventions as having the sleepwalkers vulnerable to just one thing - cat scratches. [13 Apr 1992, p.6D]
Morbid, silly and ultra-violent, Stephen King's Sleepwalkers is pure trash from the popular horrormeister. It is so bad that surely the only way that it could have been made was to have King's name on it.
Don't get me wrong I do like Stephen King a lot, his writing is growing on me all the time, and I do like a vast majority of the adaptations based off his work. Sleepwalkers, alongside TommyKnockers and Thinner is one of the worst King adaptations for me.
Although most of the effects are corny, some of the transformation sequences are surprisingly neat and some of the cameos from King himself, Clive Barker and John Landis are fun to spot, even if they pointlessly come and go.
On the other hand, that's it. The film starts off shaky with a daft prologue and right up to the equally daft ending it never recovers. The pace is disappointingly dull, the dialogue is underdeveloped and reeks of cheese, the plot is thin and idiotic and there is no genuine atmosphere and jolts as a result. Apart from the fun to spot cameos, the acting unable to do anything with sloppily written characters is dire. Director Mark Garriss does try his best, but he is hampered by the mess that are the script, pace and story, so all the flashy gyrating camera work seems like a wasted effort in the end.
In conclusion, a mess and one of the worst films based on the work of Stephen King. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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Was Sleepwalkers based on a novel or book or something? I could be wrong and don't honestly know... This is a 1992 horror directed by Mick Garris and I thought Sleepwalkers to be good in parts like Charles Brady (Brian Krause) giving some dude his hand back after he either ripped it off or somehow manages to tear it off, then his face changed into pure evil then his victim runs and Charles who isn't human follows him through the woods running after his victim. The attack on Tanya Robertson (Madchen Amick) and how he makes his car invisible to lose the cops then changes his cars colour. However Sleepwalkers is full of poor acting and laughable and cringey scenes too, non convincing performances, awfully hilarious storyline that makes little sense, dumb cops, unlikeable characters and it's neither terrifying or scary at all. If anything it comes off as a boring drama comedy at times and some parts are just pathetic and some characters are weak and to be honest the only decent actors in the entire movie aren't the human characters, it's the cats. Embarrassing!
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Awards
Fantafestival
• 4 Wins & 4 Nominations
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
