Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes (2002): This English suspense film, known as Dr Sleep over there, is an excellent thriller for a small budget production. I was expecting a routine B movie but got one that has genuine suspense and several heart stopping sequences. The story is about a pedophilic serial killer with a penchant for extreme weirdness. A somewhat discredited hypnotist making a marginal living by curing smokers of that nasty habit cures a low level policewoman who is looking after the one surviving victim of the pedophile. She decides Dr. Sleep is the one who can help get the little girl to talk again when she finds he appears to have a limited ability to read minds. This causes the plot to get moving and a number of cross currents start to flow. It becomes part detective story, part suspense thriller, and part history lesson and part horror movie all well crafted into an interesting tale. Every character is placed under intolerable stress and all the actors do a tolerable job with their roles. The movie also comes with interesting use of color (a lot of red by the way), camera angles and theme music. This can be an enjoyable weekend evening of creepy viewing. Just keep the doors and windows locked and you will sleep better at night. The movie is rated R for: involuntary blood donations, questionable tattoo artistry, bizarre dead clerics, internal ratification, rampant insomnia, and especially for the quease inducing sharp stick in the eye scene.