The Sleeper (2011).
Set in 1981, an uninvited guest, the Sleeper, watches from the shadows and studies every move of the girls of Alpha Gamma Theta sorority. One by one the girls are hunted down by the mysterious Sleeper, soon to become victims of his claw hammer.
I loved The Sleeper. For once it was great to watch a low budget horror film with decent acting and enjoyable performances, a well written script and believable characters. For me this was twenty first century independent horror at its best.
The films score is highly atmospheric and instantly brings to mind Halloween with its minimalistic approach, added to this the film effectively uses still camerawork and shows us the killers point of view whilst we hear his breathing again giving a big nod to Carpenter's classic. The Sleeper never resorts to the laziness of musical jump scares nor does it feature the frantic editing techniques mainly used in todays thrill free studio slasher films. Removing these lazy scare factors enables the viewer to digest the characters that bit more and enjoy their onscreen performances. For a change to the norm the sorority house is populated by seemingly normal, naturally pretty girls rather than the usual bimbo slasher bait.
What i really enjoyed about the film though was the fact it relied on old fashioned stalk and slash methods that were used in the 70's and 80's classics of the genre, including the use of prosthetics and real blood rather than computer created CGI which resulted in wonderful practical gory deaths.
If only the likes of Hollywood remakes such as Prom Night had been this much bloody fun. All in all i found The Sleeper to be a real breath of fresh air in a genre stifled by its own laziness.
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