New Release Review - The Other Side Of Sleep

Directed by: Rebecca Daly
Starring: Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Sam Keeley, Olwen Fouere

Campbell-Hughes is all that impresses in this pretentious Irish mystery.

She plays a textile worker in a grim village somewhere in the Irish midlands who sleepwalks at night and becomes embroiled in the murder of a young local girl.
I must confess to being a fan of the elliptical school of film-making. Some of it's best recent practitioners have been female directors, Andrea Arnold and Julia Leigh deploying it expertly in "Red Road" and "Sleeping Beauty". This is a girl's club Rebecca Daly won't be joining however. Being pretentious is fine if you have the creativity to back it up but this writer-director most certainly doesn't.
It starts promisingly enough with a very engaging performance by Campbell-Hughes, an English actress who manages to pull off a perfect Irish midlands accent. Quickly though you realise Daly is leading you nowhere, it's the type of movie that could have ended at any point without making much difference to the overall narrative, what little there is.
Ireland has produced a lot of acting talent lately but the performances here are atrocious. There's so much wooden acting here you'll be brushing sawdust off your shoulders by the end.

The Irish Film Board are a disgrace to this country. It's practically impossible for an Irish film-maker to get funding from them but if you're third generation "Oirish" from across the sea like Daly or the McDonagh brothers they'll bend over backwards for you. Nobody in Britain would touch a script as bad as this but play on your heritage like a third rate footballer and the IFB are your new best friends. Surely someone on this island can do better than this garbage.
3/10

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