‘He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’ VOD Review
Stars: Will Pealer Jr., Scot Scurlock, Nick Nichols, David Lenik, Nellie Spackman, Caroline Williams, Cedric Gegel, Natalie Veater, Peyton Michelle Edwards | Written by David Lenik | Directed by Charlie Steeds
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping is the most recent film from prolific British director Charlie Steeds (The Barge People, Night Harvest) who caps off a busy year with his first venture into Ho Ho Ho Horror, something I’m surprised it’s taken him so long to get around to.
On Christmas Eve, 1963 young Chester (Will Pealer Jr.) is told a bedtime story about Santa on a killing spree by his Uncle Nick (Scot Scurlock; Homestead, Alien: Battlefield Earth). It proves to be an omen as later that night serial killer Henry Bates (Nick Nichols) escapes from the asylum and makes his way to Copper Grove where he slaughters the Van Buren family, leaving only one survivor.
Seventeen years and a lot of therapy later, Chester (David Lenik; Mask of the Devil, The Curse of Halloween Jack) returns to Copper Grove. With his girlfriend Afton (Nellie Spackman; Central Standard, Shy Girls) for support he’s facing his trauma and spending the holidays at his childhood home, now occupied by his Aunt Marion (Caroline Williams; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Ten Minutes to Midnight), her son, Burke (Cedric Gegel; The Coroner’s Assistant, Mock and Roll) and his girlfriend, Melody (Natalie Veater; Unboxed, Board Games).
It’s obvious from the start that, despite family bonds and Chester letting them stay in his house, there’s little love between him and his relatives. It’s also obvious that his old friend Eden (Peyton Michelle Edwards; …and Then Everything Changed, Goodbye Honey) still has feelings for him.
The script, written by David Lenik, goes about where I expected it to as Chester sees a note from Henry Bates that disappears when he tries to show Afton and is followed by his seeing what appears to be a Santa-suited prowler later that night. Are his memories too much for him to deal with? Or is history about to repeat itself?
Unfortunately, less than half an hour in, it reveals that these are the work of not just his ungrateful kinfolk, but his girlfriend as well. And that’s where He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’s focus remains for most of the film. Yes, someone is killing off the conspirator’s lackeys, but that’s treated as a subplot rather than, as the poster would have you think, the film’s main focus. So instead of the Silent Night, Deadly Night style slasher I thought I was getting, I got a talky 70s-style psychological thriller.
We do get a couple of good kills, including a bald man having his skull split open with an ice skate, most of them are tame or off-screen. I’m glad the effects are practical, but there’s not nearly enough of them to make up for the dull plot and its rather ludicrous, out-of-left field revelation of the killer’s identity and motive.
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping was shot in New York with a mix of British and American actors, which also leads to an odd assortment of accents. The worst of which is sported by Lenik himself, who is quite unsuccessful at trying to sound American. On the other end of the scale, Williams proves to be the most enjoyable part of the film. She delivers the kind of campy performance one would have expected from late-career Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, and makes the scenes she’s in more entertaining than they deserve to be.
In the end, though, it’s not nearly enough to rescue He Sees You When You’re Sleeping from a script that doesn’t know what it wants to be and the disappointing way it all plays out. Given his experience with the genre, a Christmas horror should have been an easy film for Steeds to pull off, instead it’s his second disappointment after Lord of Wolves.
** 2/5
The Horror Collective has released He Sees You When You’re Sleeping to Digital and VOD platforms.
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