You Shall Not Sleep Tonight (2024)

Director: Guillermo Carbonell, Ben Deka, Julien Deka, Hervé Freiburger, Laura Kulik, Luciano Montes de Oca

Year: 2024

Country: Argentina/New Zealand

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Anthology

Plot:

Haunted by nightmares, a boy’s father tries to help him sleep, bringing about a strange series of tales.

Review:

Generally, this was a rather disappointing and not that worthwhile anthology. The main feature here involving the atmospheric wraparound involving the father trying to calm the frantic son about the monsters supposedly in his closet only to continually prove otherwise makes for a solid idea to get this one going. As well, with the majority of the segments featuring characters involved in a setup where some sort of fear ends up getting exploited is a solid idea with there being a fine set of atmospheric touches featured in the majority of the segments where something happens to play off that aspect resulting in some enjoyable stalking scenes with creatures coming into play rather nicely. As they’re all short enough that it’s not a massive time commitment zipping into the next one quickly enough, there are some positives here.

There are quite a bit of flaws to it. The biggest drawback is that it’s a secret anthology without announcing it at all so it takes a while to realize that the drawings in the comic book he’s using to try getting to sleep are coming to life and playing out before us. There’s little announcing it as such even once it gets going so there’s not much in the way of figuring out what’s going on, and the segments don’t help matters by not being all that impressive or remarkable. They seem to run until they hit a punchline and then end so there’s not much about them that leaves an impression as the ideas behind them aren’t developed much in the short running time they last. It’s what ends up bringing this one down the most.

Overview: **/5

A disappointing and not really worthwhile anthology, some likable factors are wiped out by the drawbacks on display keeping this one from being that enjoyable. Really only give it a shot if you’re a fan of the style taken here while most others out there might want to heed extreme caution with it.