Sleep Has Her House (2017) User Reviews

The misadventures of a depressed horse in the woods

[aqinen-23103 · 6/10 · 18 September 2022]

I caught this film running on a loop at a friends place which I later on was able to watch alone. A warning; If you happen, as a movie go-er, to have expectations, don't bother. It is a series of slow moving clips without direction and certainly doesn't deserve the high rating it has.

What I liked was the cinematography and sound. Chris Barley certainly has a great talent for it and I would be curious to see him collaborating with directors who can utilize this.

Yes, It depends how you want to express your art. If this rocks the filmmaker's boat and there are people who enjoy it, perfect. There are very few people left who are able to let their work be art.

However, cinema it is not. Cinema or movies do take people by the hand. It always offers them a narrative whoever strange and confusing it may be. Even David Lynch and Lars von Trier are aware of this.

The 'art' of cinema is to combine different forms (story, sound, music, image, acting, et cetera) under one creative vision.

Like I said, if the film is an expression of the filmmaker, fine. However, if the filmmaker is proposing to say; well, here is a series of slowly but beautiful moving clips, so what does it mean to you? It is a bit lazy and even a bit insulting for 1 and 1/2 hours.

This film would be wonderful as video art in a gallery. That would be definitely its niche. However, since it is on IMBD as a movie, I think the viewer deserve a small narrative which I placed as the title.

The best film to fall asleep to, in a good way!

[HankCoT · 8/10 · 28 March 2024]

Scott Barley's biggest and most ambitious project yet deliverers an entrancing experience that enkindles fascination as much as relaxation.

A film guided by the pacing of nature, letting the climate pass by, slowly revealing a story more akin to music, not by telling a concrete narrative but elaborating on mood and atmosphere ; as mysterious as it is wonderful, a place engulfed in darkness, yet surrounded by calming sounds of waterfalls, winds and leaves.

I am so surprised by just how much a few simple shots of nature can be this skilfully utilized, conveying the beauty and harshness of a forest in a truly unique way.

A Melodic Dream

[Style_is_Substance · 9/10 · 10 April 2017]

This is definitely among the best films of 2016, a rather strong year for cinema. It is a prodigious thought knowing that such a powerful film as Sleep Has Her House was shot on an iPhone. The darkly beautiful cinematography is complemented by harmonious score and ethereal images. Perhaps every last shot of the film could serve as its poster. Sleep combines the best elements of experimental films like The Hart of London, The Turin Horse, and Visions of Meditation to form an ineffable cinematic experience. The film is thoroughly engaging and beautifully shot and edited. Despite being considered a "slow movie", Sleep Has Her House moves forward fairly quickly, never focusing on one shot for too long, balancing its themes quite well.

Perhaps Barley's greatest achievement with this film is portraying a dream-like state, channeling the likes of Tarkovsky and Deren. The film's length matches the time of an average sleep cycle, and the film itself carries the viewer through such a dream and its different stages.

The first part of the film depicts a sense of ambivalence within a dream found in the confines of nature. The remainder of the film appears as a gradual descent into nature's acceptance of the world's end, the true inevitable nightmare. This is accomplished with Barley's impressive form and leaves this writer with a sense of awe, similar to the emotional response gained from Fricke and Reggio's films, although through different subject matter.

This viewer expects a gradual increase of attention and appreciation for Barley's work by cinephiles in the near future. It is great. Watch it for yourself.

A Deeply Moving Audiovisual Experience.

[Ali_Mandi · 9/10 · 6 August 2019]

During the early moments of Sleep Has Her House, you get the feeling that something will eventually jump at you, but you quickly learn that this is not that kind of film. Sleep Has Her House is a film of extreme subjectivity as the viewer is concerned. With its sounds and images, it evokes emotions, ideas, and -most of all in my case- memories and wonderment.

It is composed of images that exist in a state of both motion and stillness at once, they seem to constantly expand and shrink. Objects and places slowly revealing themselves to you, except, is it really what you think it is? Images morphing into different things based on space, distance and light. But that's all just a description. What this work forces you to do, is to bring your own experience, and your own emotions to it. While the images and the sounds navigate you through them. There's a moment where it all goes to black, and stars slowly emerge from the darkness, alive and breathing, with beautiful and ethereal music, which suddenly cuts to what I perceive to be the heavens, driving me to shift my thinking to something higher, much higher than what I was bringing. And as soon as it lifted me, it dropped me back to it's pit. It's one of the most moving things I've ever seen in a film.

I know the filmmaker was partially inspired by Scott Walker and Grouper, and it's truly fascinating how the influence of those sound artists is obvious on the images of the film.

Sleep Has Her House doesn't aim to pass your time, but rather make you feel and live every minute of its running time. This is a great, highly experimental film, with a meticulous sound design that's inseparable from its images.

This is something else...

[MinderSuikers · 10/10 · 8 January 2019]

...more an unforgettable experience than a film. It is nothing you just can watch with friends and chat and check your phone etc. I would strongly recommend to see it alone with no distraction and handle it a bit like a meditation. Give it it's time and stay tuned what your mind will show you!

Painful

[danielustinov · 1/10 · 12 October 2022]

Content more suitable for a audio/visual exhibit, digital displays or projectors +/- sound, not cinema. I suspect the director just had a bunch of pictures and footage and thought "hey why not throw this together and call this a film?" - and so they did. This is the sort of movie that makes you question if there is an idea, a thought behind the imagery and atmosphere, or just poor planning and laziness. This is more akin to a PowerPoint presentation than a movie. The nature depicted in the images is gorgeous and sadly struggling for meaning or purpose. If you have run out of things to watch go to YouTube instead.

This is not a movie.

[Red_Shining · 1/10 · 30 December 2023]

Director Scott Barley's unconventional approach may resonate more as a visual art installation than a traditional movie. The absence of a coherent storyline or traditional cinematic features might lead viewers to question its classification as a film. Rather, it seems to invite contemplation, encouraging audiences to engage with its abstract and atmospheric qualities, akin to an art piece in a gallery.

The film's deliberate use of darkness, grainy visuals, and subdued soundscape might not appeal to those seeking a typical cinematic experience. Its sparse imagery, including fleeting glimpses of nature like horses and water, invites interpretation and introspection, offering a different kind of cinematic encounter that might not be everyone's cup of tea.

In essence, "Sleep Has Her House" cannot be classed as a movie. It uses 1/5 of the screen and its departure from mainstream movie elements is better suited for those intrigued by experimental visual storytelling and open to unconventional artistic expressions.

Sleep Has Her House

[M0n0_bogdan · 4/10 · 23 August 2023]

Mind-numbing think piece.

This kinda works just like hypnosis...it does its job only if you allow it, if you go with it. And you have to do a lot of preparation in order to work. You have to see this in pitch black, not during the day, but late at night. You have to let your mind wander and fill in the blanks. Basically, this is the reason I don't like it. It's a minimal effort from the director. He just crops up some barely visible stills (some with movement) with sound effects and you have to do the story, and make it on the spot. I get it. Some will like that.

The LB rating shows that this platform is filled with people who desperately try to find meaning in nothing, pretentious people. And Scott did this service for them. Those people finished all cinema and now try to search for meaning in anti-cinema, which this film clearly is. You can keep it.

This is worse than Last and First Men.

Oh dear God, this was abysmal...

[paul_haakonsen · 1/10 · 11 March 2024]

Right, well I had never heard about this 2017 movie titled "Sleep Has Her House" from writer and director Scott Barley. So I didn't know what I was in for. But I have to say that the movie was not off to a great start with the two dogs just standing around doing nothing but fade into the darkness.

I made it 8 minutes into the foray, then I had to fast forward a bunch of times and seeing that every two to five minutes skipped was just the same scene shot from a further distance, then I turned off the dumpster fire that is "Sleep Has Her House". This was not a movie, it was just boredom caught on tape.

I have to say that "Sleep Has Her House" was a bit too avantgarde for my liking. I read that the first cut of the movie was four hours long, Just imagine the suffering of sitting through four hours of the dumpster fire that is "Sleep Has Her House". That is just unsettling to think about.

Do yourself a favor and skip of this one. It seriously is a waste of time.

My rating of "Sleep Has Her House" lands on a very generous one out of ten stars. This was definitely a top three contender to the list of most terrible movies I have ever stumbled upon.