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Overall Rating : 3/10
Directed By : Barrett J. Leigh, Thom Maurer
William Sanderson (Deadwood (TV) )
Tom Savini (Land Of The Dead)
Fountain Yount
Supplied By : Visceral Pictures
Film Reviewed By : Rick Blalock
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| PLOT A mysterious mountain man being held in the Ulster County Asylum after the brutal murder of his family. Edward Eischel, a young intern, sees something more than just an inbred monster in this new inmate, however. Instead, he sees him as the harbinger of some greater and much darker force. With bodies piling up, his job in jeopardy, and his sanity hanging in the balance he gives in to his obsession with tapping into Joe's hidden power, risking all that he has along the way. |
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| THE REVIEW BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, starts of as what looks to be a quite interesting and promising indie flick. Going into this I really did not know what I was getting into or what to expect. I thought the film's opening was awesome as well as about the first 10 minutes of film,...all looked great. But later on in this film all of the flashy effects and camera work that was seemingly winning this film the gold quickly runs dry and ultimately gets stale, This film is about a kooky new intern named Edward Eischel whom works at an insane asylum, he performs weird experiments on the patients and when testing he forms quite the liking to patient Joe Slaader. Joe is in there for the supposed murder of his parents years ago. They blame Joe's problem on the fact that he is an inbred and also think that he quite weird, because Slaader has a growth on his back that resembles a human face extruding out of it. When bodies begin piling up at the asylum, everyone points the finger at Joe, but Edward Eischel, believes that it is a far darker mysterious force behind this. This film is a bit on the strange side, and the "man living in ones back" reminds me of the old film "Basket Case. The young intern basically believes that this thing on Joe's back is what drives Joe to do these things, almost like a "devil on your shoulder" type thing, That's what it really as boils down to. The intern becomes so obsessed that he is pulled in from the evil and indulges in it. He is some how convinced by the being that he must sacrifice people in order to "release" him. The film is shot in half B/w and half color and it often puts you in a trance like state wile watching it. This is a beautiful thing indeed, but like I said the way it is presented makes it go cold rather quickly, almost looking like an Ed Wood film at times, and for this movie it's not a good thing like it tends to sometimes be for a few. All in all the production outshines everything else here. I feel that if they would've cut down on the cost of flashy photography and invested in better acting this film could've been a lot more than it was. |
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| GORE
METER 6/10 I'd say that the gore in BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP, is pretty effective for this type of independent and fun to look at...if nothing more. |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 4/10 The score was ok for this film I suppose, however it really does not make the impact that I think the filmmakers would've wished. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM In closing, The only thing that drags this movie down a bit is it's lackluster approach to it's story. The effects? Well they're great but they are just the skin on the meat, the meat (the adaptation of the story) Is what is, not so great. |
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