ZZZ

Hello from Ohio. First day over at HorrorHound Weekend is over now. I have yet to see most of it. I spent all day either in the film room, or not at the convention at all. I got there a couple of hours early, mostly because I had no idea what the parking would be like. It is a pain in the ass to find a parking space at the hotel in Indianapolis, but it isn't a problem at all here. I didn't want an early in pass, since it is like $10 more for just two days of the three. The first movie started at 5pm, which was when I could get into the convention rooms. This was the movie The Sleeper (2011). After it was over, I went for a walk to find something to eat. I had breakfast, but nothing since then, so was feeling rather hungry. Once I got back, I didn't know that the other movie had been pushed back by an hour. If I had known that, I would have went walking around. Plenty of time to do that tomorrow though.

Amy (Brittany Belland) has been invited by the sorority Alpha Gamma Theta in order to possibly become a pledge. The girls throw a party to hopefully welcome her, and her friend in, but only Amy decides to be a pledge. Little do the girls know though, someone (Jason Jay Crabtree) is watching them. Once in a while we see him sitting somewhere, drawing Z's on each girls picture. The picture he draws these on is the one that will die next. He will the call the house and mutter into the phone while whoever answered it looks puzzled. As the girls start to go missing Detectives Drake (E. Ray Goodwin) and James (Luke Frost) are called in. Will the be able to find the killer before all the girls are killed?

The Sleeper is a low budget film that was written and directed by Justin Russell. It was filmed in Ohio, I believe Russell said about 40 miles away from the convention. While watching it, I couldn't help but think of the movie Black Christmas. This film is set in the year 1981, and Russell admits that he wanted the feel from older slasher films such as Black Christmas. There are movies that will remind you of other films, and then there are movies that you remind you a bit too much of other films like it. The Sleeper even has a scene where a body is found in a rocking chair. I fully expected it to have a plastic bag over their head, but the person was killed in a different way at least. While I felt that Russell did a fine job directing his film, I wasn't all that happy with the story. It wasn't that it completely reminded me of another movie, but that there was next to no atmosphere to it. We don't really ever get to know any of the characters. There really isn't a main character to speak of. After Amy leaves the party, the attention turns to the girls in the sorority being killed off before returning back to Amy.

With each kill, there is a small pause while the next person gets a small spotlight on them before being killed off. This includes the worse basketball game to possibly be put on film. A dance sequence is also included. And sneaking up on someone in an empty indoor pool, not once, but twice. In fact I don't think I've ever watched a movie where people were able to sneak up on each other and never once be noticed except this one. I do have to give thanks to the straggle kill. It didn't take 5 seconds to kill the person like it seems to do in other horror movies. This one took a while, which it actually does.

The effects start off kind of bad with the first kill, which I believe Russell said was one he would do over if he was able to. It involved a hammer, which was the killers choice of weapon most of the time, being smashed into a face. It goes right into the head on the first swing. The effects do manage to get better from there at least though. The acting was fine. I did like Brittany Belland. She makes a pretty good scream queen. A special guest cameo can be found by John Bloom. You might know him better as Joe Bob Briggs though. You can also find Paul Moon, Tiffany Arnold, Jenna Fournier and Riana Ballo.

I really hate to down The Sleeper since it is a low budget film that was playing in front of its home crowd so to speak. There just wasn't much to the story and it was pretty easy to figure out what all was going to happen before it did. Another set back the movie has because it is low budget is that we never see much of any extras. Being a college campus, you would expect to see others around, but we see very few. I can't blame the film itself for this, and really it was a minor thing anyway. Even though I didn't care for The Sleeper, I still appreciated that Russell was there to answer questions after the movie was over. I would comment on some of the things he said, but he had a habit of holding the mic a little too far away. Some words could be heard find while I had to struggle to catch other words in the same sentence. As for The Sleeper, if it gets picked up for a DVD release, it is worth at least one watch.
2 out of 5 Still confused on how the second person was killed