Overlook Film Festival — A–Z of films

It’s solidly rooted in the ordinary and yet its habit of drawing out small absurdities means that ordinary things and places won’t seem so safe after you’ve seen it.

We get demonstrations of skill, from the weaving of a bracelet to the use of herbs to treat a wound, and these elements reinforce the idea that this is a real society which has developed organically over time.

The inventiveness of the crew and Lucio Fulci's singular vision raise it well above most genre work of the period and make it well worth checking out.

What emerges is thoughtful and deeply humane, whilst retaining that sense of otherness essential to folkloric tales.

It’s Schafer’s performance that anchors it.

One of the most impressive horror films of the silent era.

While Louis-Seize’s treatment of the night is atmospheric, the emphasis here is firmly on comedy rather on gore.

Not necessarily successful, but nonetheless compelling, even hypnotic

It tells what could be a goofy story, about awkward teenagers obsessed with a TV series called The Pink Opaque, but portrays it as an ominous, nightmarish mindfuck.

The use of sparse but spacious landscapes enhances both story and themes, with small farms and towns clinging to the earth in defiance of the elements, humble before distant mountains.

The supernatural is not super for nothing. Poltergeists are play things compared to this lot.

It is a rare thing to come across a tale as carefully constructed as this one.

Again and again there are elements that will be echoed in later works, mirrors and masks and little friends, split screens and thrills and untimely ends.

Mixing horror elements with character study and a tender portrait of a relationship in crisis, Sleep easily slides between genres and, in the process, keeps viewers guessing.

Where other such tales have become overly enmeshed in their own structural entanglements, Felker has the good sense to focus on character.