Dead Awake (2016) 1h 39m

Yes! Back-to-back movies about sleep during my insomnia period!  I feel like Netflix is either pulling one of those "well, have you tried falling asleep" moments or, inversely, is trying to point out all the horrible things that can happen when one sleeps.  Either way, you are not helpful nor are you a doctor Netflix, so get off my sleep dick!

A long time ago I covered a documentary about Old Hag Syndrome/sleep paralysis called The Nightmare.  If you aren't familiar with Old Hag Syndrome it takes its name from an antiquated belief that if you had sleep paralysis then it was an old witch that was sitting on your chest and preventing you from moving.  This is our focus with Dead Awake.  Kate (or Beth, I forget as the same woman plays both of them) wakes up at night with the feeling that something is watching her and keeping her from moving.  After a weird birthday party where a woman literally stops the music to gossip about her husband that is in the room, Kate has a freak out where she shares a bit about her experiences.  Beth kind of believes her and after Kate dies in her sleep Beth begins to have the same experiences.  When Lori Petty is unable to give her answers she seeks out some semi-new age weirdo that claims he can help and tried to help her sister before Take Girl told her to avoid him.

Up front this movie gets very Nightmare on Elm Street, but not so much that it kills it.  What kills it is that Dead Awake is kind of boring.  Don't get me wrong, there are some scenes in this film that did it justice but not enough to create a comfortable set of peaks and valleys.  For example, the creature doing a Ring crawl up the hallway to the bed or the spider falling from the ceiling to land on Kate's open eyeball were each squirm worthy in their own way.  Yet these are two moments in what is endless research and Lori Petty not driving a tank and chugging a beer to fight this thing.  Sorry, but I fucking love Tank Girl.

I give Dead Awake 2 copies of Tank Girl out of 5:

8th Cut Begins! Bedeviled (2016) 1h 31m

When I was a kid I was easily scared by all kinds of dumb stuff.  Most of it being something related to the supernatural, but all of it being stupid shit that kids get scared of.  The concept of "apps" didn't exist until after I was out of college, but let's just say, for one minute, that it existed when I was a child.  There is no way in hell I'd be scared of an app with a silhouette of Pee Wee Herman on it!

Bedeviled is like someone took the original Nightmare on Elm Street and decided to make Freddy some sort of spooky demon in app form.  After a local girl is found dead of what seems to be heart failure all of her friends receive a request from her to download Bedeviled.  What starts out as a much better Siri turns into an evil presence that feeds off of fear and has no problem bending time and space to scare the hell out of anyone with the app.

If I wanted someone to try and scare me in regards to the use of technology then I would show my grandparents my iPhone and then proceed to hear all of the crazy shit they picked up from TV shows about how it will probably kill me.  This film had that overtone of "those damn kids and their cell phones," woven inside of it.  Yet, it tried to stay hip with the kids by mentioning stuff like BitTorrent and having phone hacking.  It does lose touch again quickly though when a cop starts listing off possible drugs one of the kids might be on and it goes "...molly, skunk...poppers, sniffing each other's dirty underwear, bath salt orgies!"  Remember kids:  only a cop will ask you for something like molly or skunk, and if they ask for poppers or where the bath salt orgies are then they're a pervert.

There are some saving graces in this film.  The entity can only exist and manipulate digital technology so anything analog is safe.  They end up finding a reel-to-reel recording which helps the remaining two in their attempt to delete this thing from their phones.  The app tricking a lot of them into revealing their biggest fears to use against them was also well done, except for the teddy bear.  That was just trying too hard.  The final nod (and I assume homage to Elm Street) was the mom ending up with the app on her phone at the end.  It was like the mannequin being pulled through the door by Freddy.  Unfortunately, these just weren't enough to bring me around to recommend this movie.

I give Bedeviled 1 iPhone out of 5:

Day 20: (Wes Craven's) New Nightmare (1994) 1h 52min

To the best of my knowledge this is one of, if not the first, "meta" horror films to exist.  Set in the "real world" the actors and individuals related to the Nightmare on Elm Street series play themselves.  There are a few exceptions such as the kid from Pet Cemetery playing Dylan (Heather's fake son) and of course Robert Englund reprising Freddy (although the credits say Freddy was played by Freddy Krueger) but overall the border between reality and film are blurred.  So much so that Wes Craven actually included the Heather stalker in the film which was an existing real life event Heather was dealing with at the time and gave him permission to include.

The premise of New Nightmare is similar to previous installments in the sense that film Wes states that all of the energy and fandom surrounding Freddy has caused him to manifest as an actual entity.  The films kept him going and that it's been so long since he's had that attention and focus he has come back to attack the original people involved.  Heather has tons of nightmares and signs of Freddy, Dylan is slowly becoming possessed by Freddy, Wes is haunted by nightmares which cause him to start a new script, and Robert's random beach scene paintings are forgotten for him to paint an awesome Freddy with souls painting.  Seriously, I want a print of that in my home.  I'd hang it right over the bed.  Not on the wall, but on the ceiling.  That's hot, right?  My fiancé isn't here to say otherwise, so it officially is.

We're also treated to a redesign on Freddy himself.  Personally, I'm in the middle of the road with how he looks in this.  The new biomech claw hand is a nice touch, but the head piece isn't as scary as the burned and melted face.  They bring back some of his more interesting moments too like the tongue in the phone and the elongated arms but I'm still middle of the road with him here.

This was actually the last Nightmare on Elm Street film with Robert, and the next to last time he would play Freddy.  Freddy vs. Jason actually takes the credit for the final Robert-as-Freddy moment... goin' out with a bang there, eh buddy?  For real though, I love Robert Englund.  So much so I own Dance of the Dead just because he was on the cover of it.

I only have one real criticism of this film and that would be the sound effects.  They continually use the same stock "pot breaking"  noise for everything from plates falling of the wall in an earthquake to a statue breaking in a cemetery.  Also, when Heather and Dylan are escaping Freddy's nightmare realm there is what I can only describe as a "chamber of farts" sound while they fly through the sky.

Overall, I give New Nightmare 3 Elm St. signs out of 5: