The Sleep of Reason (2007– ) User Reviews

Originality at last

[laurenti-monica · 8/10 · 6 November 2007]

I saw all eight episodes of the series on Studio Universal, enduring until dawn when they aired the last one! But it was well worth it. Although in the beginning you may be tricked into believing this is all true, it turns out I was watching one of the most original experiments of TV fiction I've seen in years. At times the story is so dense to be confusing, but the way it is narrated makes you want to know what happens to the characters next and instantly sympathize for them. It is not easy for short movies to establish that bridge with its characters because they don't last enough to build on their personality. Here it somehow happens and at episode 3 you feel as you've known forever, as if this was the series' second or third season. The thriller background is very entertaining and the British journalist hosting the series moves at ease in a world of mentally disturbed politicians, deranged psychiatrists, arrogant medical doctors.

Ten-minute thrillers at full blast - if you can find them

[mmrossner · 7/10 · 26 December 2007]

Is "The Sleep of Reason" a television series, a news report for mobile phones or both? After watching it all in one go on Universal's channel, I found out you could download another previously unreleased (and apparently unrelated) episode from the internet. So I did. Same characters, but this time a totally different story. In the beginning it seemed disorienting, but then I realized there is a carefully thought over mechanism in the way all of these segments, disseminated at one time both on the web and on television, interconnect with each other. Even though in order to follow the thread you've got to get used to jumping from one platform to the other. And what I liked about it is that although it goes on breaking every possible rule of dramatic narration, it emulates the structure of a typical, full length television episode with prologue, teaser and cliffhanger, compressing in less than ten minutes what usually takes almost sixty. So who cares about where the story's actually going or if it's based on true facts: you've got a few dense minutes to digest at full blast here before you have the time to wonder if it's real or all fake after all.

Great concept for an intricate story

[alberto-terenzi · 7/10 · 12 November 2007]

If you asked me today what the story of "The Sleep of Reason" is about, I would have difficulties recapping it chronologically. There are so many interlacing subplots in this series that it's hard to remember one in particular, except that there's a psychiatrist murdered by one of her patients. But the concept, that is news report styled drama interspersed with allegedly (and often very well orchestrated) exclusive footage about the event narrated in each episode, is totally new. Although you inevitably suspend the credibility factor halfway, the way the events are conveyed is so intriguing that you lose sight of whether the facts are real of fiction. I saw the series in one go at the Ravenna Film Festival and I must agree with others that it is somehow tough to go through all of the episodes sequentially, given the abundance of material: so this is probably the perfect companion on your portable media player with its more than tolerable length of about ten minutes. I had fun and at the end of it I wanted to have more, and given how easily bored I get (especially at this experimental stuff) this is definitely a good sign.

Ambiguous, but effective

[vvdmaster · 9/10 · 17 November 2007]

It's interesting how this project, presented on TV as something that was originally conceived to be a podcast, has evolved to become a full fledged television series. Although intentionally surrounded by much mystery and ambiguity, the 8 episodes (I only managed to see five of them) actually happen to be quite entertaining and well produced. The story revolves around the murder of a psychiatrist (whom we only see in flashback mode) and the attempt by her alleged assassin to turn the responsibility of the killing on to her husband, himself a psychiatrist. But this plot is only a pretext to introduce what I thought was the really new concept underlying this project: that everything real has always an "unreal" or supernatural alter ego, so that in analyzing what is going on the series' host (a journalist who has become a good friend to the husband) draws your attention to issues like communication with the dead or unknown rituals rather than to the factual investigation of the murder. Although I have no idea of how this first chunk of the series ends at episode 8, I liked how the authors totally broke the usual rules of dramatic narration to come up with something that at least explores ways to make a story enjoyable on both your TV screen and on your ipod.

Worth watching in its chaotic structure

[ste-orlando · 8/10 · 1 December 2007]

In the series "The Sleep of Reason", produced by and aired on Studio Universal, a British journalist investigates the murder of a woman and tries to explain that behind this homicide there is some kind of irrational explanation. The more he tries to collect evidence, the more he gets dragged into the world of the paranormal: mediums, ghosts, bi-location, transmigration of the soul. What I found it fascinating, compared to other similar kind of formats, is that here there is no effort whatsoever to scare, on the contrary everything is reported exactly as a real journalist would. This detached style of telling what is quite an incredible story is I think the strength of this product, halfway between a collection of independent shorts and a miniseries. "The Blair Witch Project" is probably the only other movie I have seen in years that has given me the same sense of realism, although its premises were completely different in its attempt to boost its own credibility, whereas "The Sleep of Reason" does not really deny its fictional nature. Rather, it applies a news reporting style to fiction in a way that makes the product's structure prevail over story itself, with "realism" becoming the grid through which the plot unfolds. While not immune from often severe dramatic inconsistencies and sometimes chaotic story lines, something to watch nevertheless.

A micro series with an edge

[michael-mcalister · 9/10 · 19 January 2008]

It took me a bit to change my mind about what I first thought to be one of the way too many amateur experiments in self-production you can find on You Tube. A psychiatrist believed to be an expert in alternative therapies turns out to be a hallucinogenic junkie, a killer tries to prove he committed his crime while hypnotised by the real murderer, a young woman is plagued by a nightmare where she's killed by someone she later meets in real life, a man asks a medium to help him talk to his dead wife and he finds out she's probably still alive: these are just among the few of the characters in this strange mix of reality and drama where a British journalist attempts to dig deeper in the murder of a doctor by assembling facts in his micro investigations. Only to realise that all characters are somehow connected with each other, and each has something to hide. Moreover, the story does not seem to have any end in sight as new subplots, characters and plot points are introduced at every corner making it sometimes tough to remember what happened just a few minutes before. Although its effectiveness is questionable theatrically (I cannot imagine watching this for more than fifteen minutes at once), the rather entertaining background that the authors have disseminated on other sites ultimately turn it into an enjoyable treasure hunt game if you end being captured by what is going on and by the concept that there's always an occult side to what happens in our lives. The composed British TV host seems to be about to burst out laughing at times as the events unravel in their inherent absurdity, but all in all at the end of each part it's one of those little self-made things that surprisingly made me want to see more.

Tantalizing thriller newscast, ideal for mobile phone viewing

[jennifersarti · 8/10 · 26 April 2008]

This series first appeared later last year in festival circuits (presented sometimes as a horror, other times as a thriller or documentary), then it showed up as a special news report on a number of local television channels before starting its official run as a pod cast. A British journalist begins detailing the facts leading to the murder of an unknown psychiatrist whom, we shall learn later, uses her patients as guinea pigs for certain strange experiments in regressive hypnosis. When the psychiatrist ends up becoming a victim of her own shortcomings a number of people, including her husband, start concocting theories about her murder that the journalist in his turn uses as a grid for one of the most intricate story lines you can imagine. Specialists in mind altering drugs, forensic experts, doctors from any areas of practice and former patients, all seem to have something useful to say about why it happened and who could have done it. Short and streamlined, each episode is a little gem of narrative inventiveness.