Synopsis
The shadows of screams climb beyond the hills. It has happened before. But this will be the last time. The last few sense it, withdrawing deep into the forest. They cry out into the black, as the shadows pass away, into the ground.
Sleep Has Her House
2017 Directed by Scott Barley
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For anybody who wishes to see Sleep Has Her House (or wants to simply own a copy) it can now be purchased as a Blu-Ray quality digital file (16GB) from my website: https://scottbarley.com/store
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Watching this and Space Jam in the same day should honestly be a crime.
My thoughts and approach to this film shifted throughout its duration. At first I was totally approaching it as an experimental film, which it is to a certain extent, but the further into it I got I realized it's actually just a really unique horror film. Not only that but it's one of the most terrifying horror films I've seen. But it's also, in some ways, a drama, maybe even a romance. Sleep Has Her House is so abstract yet so focused that it can really fit into any genre depending on how you look at it, although calling it a comedy is definitely a stretch.… -
Lit and shot in a manner that allows dimness to completely envelop the majority of each long take, so that the focus on the landscapes & the exploration of space feels like you're observing the remnants of an isolated or even forsaken region. The cocoon of darkness that the life exists within is so murky that it's less reminiscent of shadows & earthly lowlight, and more reminiscent of a distant location in which earthly sites sprout from deep space; a galaxy trapped somewhere between ourselves and an inky infinity. For me, this is a "science fiction" film, through and through -- a portrait of an Earth, or an adjacent reality, that has become alien, invaded not by extraterrestrials but by a slow, persistent decay. A knowledge that, eventually, the nightfall will become permanent and places such as these will only exist in the memories of a blind universe.
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84
Almost impenetrable - as if a sci-fi fantasy world has collapsed into a never-ending void and it was captured and showcased in a molasses space. Completely enveloping, I found myself lulled into its rhythms before understanding that what occurs is permanent, that there is no way out, and the night will eventually emerge without a sunrise. It almost feels historical, in the guise of experimental horror - a transmission of what can and will happen. Immense darkness throughout, not just in the sense of the film overtaking what is visible, but what is felt. From the sound design to the clarity of the images, this is specifically designed to overtake emotional responses first and foremost, but then the physical. All that's left is Nature's wrath, and the harrowing cackle of thunder.
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More "slow cinema" should take a stab at horror. Like watching the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia on slo-mo, Sleep Has Her House presents the unmolested beauty of nature, then slowly twists and gnarls it using little more than almost imperceptible pull-outs and a slurred sense of time communicated by fading light. The film's elements are, well, elemental, using subtle movement of space and time to radically alter the tone. Consider how the opening shot of a waterfall begins so tranquilly. Then the shot starts to expand, pulling out until the cascading water, at first gossamer waves of falling mist that fills the screen, gets smaller and smaller as a colossal landscape emerges around it. Eventually, the roar…
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Nocturnal snapshots of heaven descending into Earth. There is a primitive aspect to Scott Barley work, his movies tend to play around some very basic elements, light and all enveloping darkness, the wind on the trees, water, clouds, the movement of the camera (whose material presence is always felt) as it relates to those. Less a return to nature than a return to essential things and the manner filmmaking can render them. It is never just pure admiration, but also contains a good deal of trembling, a horror like quality that is hard to shake. Sleep Has Her House, his first feature I’ve seen, makes this relation more explicit even before moving towards pure near abstract horror in the final…
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"...but this will be the last time."
an audiovisual experience dense enough to be the hottest material in existence before finally expanding into true form; something that feels like another universe entirely, a realm without boundaries. so much of this should scare, the fragmentation of reality and the colliding/consumption of light by shadows, but its shot in such a manner that all of this feels welcoming rather than a finality. the vulnerability this shows even without actors or spoken dialogue is something i will ponder for a very, very long time. let the waters wash me away.
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we may, potentially,
have a motherfuckin'
master in our midst;
one of the best final
shots I have ever seen.(will try to write more,
still reflecting for now) -
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Sleep Has Her House is a monumental achievement of slow cinema and film as a whole. This film has somehow managed to capture the sublime. It has managed to show the world around us as the great overwhelming lifeblood that it is. To experience this film is to live in a world without humans or language. We're witness to colossal waterfalls and massive trees that extend beyond our heads. I got this sense that this movie could be taking place long before humans came into being, or long after we're gone. It drives home the idea that whether we humans evolve to the point of leaving to other planets, or we all bomb each other and end the race, the…
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"Like those apparitions that lurk, then dance with us, that disarm us, seduce us even, as we turn our necks, and stare back down the path we tread, and into the dark, beyond the trees, I too, want to disarm, and seduce through rendering the invisible..."
- Scott Barley -
listened to Clipping’s Piano Burning and Metallica‘s Fade to Black alongside some other miscellaneous ambient songs and the sound design to truly get lost in the textures of the images. both beautiful and terrifying, depending on what mood you’re in and what you need to find from the environments on display, I think it’ll play differently but in equally effective ways. I needed something comforting amidst the darkness and I got that, even as the world contorted and the rain poured, it made me clamour for the cold beast of nature. the best thing I can say about it is that it feels like it came from another planet.