Use of Tropes: Sleep Stalker

This is a 2025 feature from directors Justin Shilton and Rob Zazzali, and I previously looked at their feature Shark Girl. Rob Zazzali contacted me to see if I would look at this new film and maybe feature it here on TMtV.

Now, had I watched this cold I would probably not have done a “Use of Tropes”, the tropes are, to be fair, sparse indeed – though I was reminded to a degree of one of the 19th Century great vampire stories, Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla (1887) but Rob had already suggested that “I realize this may be even further outside your Vampire sphere…but perhaps fits well in your “Use of Tropes” bucket.” Though the tropes might be sparse, that sort of message suggests the filmmakers knew what they were doing with them.

video channel

The film was, Rob confessed, filmed on a budget and so the filmmakers used the found footage genre to allow the film room to breathe within the financial constraints and the primary two characters are content creators/influencers. They are Abby (Gabrielle Montes de Oca, Shark Girl) and Shane (Josh Gilmer), and the opening shots of the film are the titles to their video channel. An intertitle tells us that what we are about to see was made up of socials and personal videos made before their channel went dark, We meet them proper going into a property at night that they have bought sight unseen.

sonambulist

In the morning, they start to assess the house, the work that needs doing to it, the furniture left in the house and the potential decorating. The idea is that they will chart their progress as content for the channel. The house isn’t too bad for being bought sight unseen. However, it isn't long before Abby catches Shane sleepwalking. Though not a staple of the genre, sleepwalking is a major plot point in Dracula and suggests a psychic disturbance at the very least. One thing the audience sees, which Abby misses, is when Shane tried to open the front door and she leads him back to bed, the chain being opened by a presence unseen.

happier moment

The film relies on both Josh Gilmer’s performance and small-scale strange phenomena (such as doors opening) to build an unheimlich feeling. It also concentrates on the impact on the couple, him becoming more and more exhausted and obsessed with the idea that there is something occult happening, her dismissive of that theory, wanting to get their content down and becoming scared of him and what he might do in his sleep. Her fears escalate to the point where it is inferred she has deleted footage, probably because there was unexplainable elements to it. They go to a sleep institute who give them cameras to monitor his sleepwalking, but he refuses to be medicated. Eventually Shane puts a call out for a psychic.

Yvans Jourdain as Gabriel

The psychic is Gabriel (Yvans Jourdain), who arrives when Shane is out and feels nothing but warmth and good energy in the house. However, his demeanour changes when Shane returns to the house and he suggests that the young man’s aura is off and that something non-human has attached itself to him. This then is where the film reminded me of the Horla. Rather than a demonic or spirit possession, the 19th century story has a separate, invisible species attach to ordinary folk and they are energy vampires.

Gabrielle Montes de Oca as Abby

In truth, in this, we never get to know what this actually is; spirit, demon or unknown species – there is some suggestion that it might be the previous owner, John. It could also be that John himself was targeted by the presence and the sleepwalking/possession is either John reliving his events or trying to communicate and, with this reading, the “attached thing” may not directly causing the sleepwalking. The film keeps this as broad as it can so the viewer can interpret but there is nothing to indicate that Shane is being fed upon.

feeding blood

The only other thing to mention is Abby finding him chopping (something not particularly seen but may be some lamb, or meat of some describe), pouring blood into a glass and forcing her to drink “the blood of the lamb”. Although not vampiric it was a moment of blood drinking. All in all, whilst some might want a more definitive answer as to what was occurring, the filmmakers make an off-kilter little mystery, overcoming budget by keeping things simple, relying on actors and focusing on the realm of influencers to allow a found footage aesthetic where the rolling cameras make sense.

The imdb page is here.