Review of Sleepless (2001) by Dougal S — 25 Nov 2009

Now this is more along the lines of the Argento I remember and love! After Phantom of the Opera left a bad taste in my mouth, I decided to root through my old collection and find a decent offering from The Master.

All of his trademarks are there. You get the showing of animals and music, a score by the Goblins, themes of childhood and the whodunit. I'm glad to say that the murders are back to the way they should be: gory and stylish.

There were a few times I winced and got really surprised by some murders (a flute... what?!?) Argento's style is back to normal for this one. The suspense is back (all about that train scene!), there more shot compostitions than I could keep track of and the style is everywhere with the camera.

There were a couple of themes at play here that were very interesting. Old school vs new school is something that happens to us all at one point or another in life and they make great use of it here. Max von Sydow is definitely the best peroformer here.

He got a lot of emotion from me and made me crack up at the same time. Stephano Dionisi was very bland in his role. I didn't think too much of him. Chiara Caselli gave a very bi-polar performance where one minute she's an angel and the next she's a huge bitch.

Is that the actress or the character? Not sure. Roberto Zibetti was really weird in his role but that actually got me interested in his character. Is there something going on between those two dudes? Paolo Maria Scalondro was annoying and didn't do much for me.

To be fair to some of the actors, they were dubbed over and it sounded horrible. The script had its fair share of boo-boos, however. The tension with the murder sequences was still there, but knowing exactly what was coming before it did was still somewhat of a letdown.

How about throwing those murders when one would least expect it? Just a thought. There was also some weird reactions to certain deaths, not in the sense of the acting, but in the sense that nobody even acknowledged it! Huh? A lot of the dialogue is pretty terrible.

It's present in Argento's older movies too, but for the fact that they're older, I'm able to let most of it go. This is the 21st century, however, it's time to get some coaches or better actors, dude! But I guess that's what I get for enjoying a new Argento movie that takes it old school.

It stays true to its giallo roots, is gory as hell, very stylish, suspenseful, and interesting. Just tune up that dialogue/script and we could've had another full blown classic.