‘Sleep Stalker’ Is Eerie Found Footage With a Good Ending and Mild Scares: A Review

Sleep Stalker is a found footage movie about a couple who buy a new house that seems to be causing one of them to sleepwalk in increasingly distressing and dangerous ways.

Home-improvement influencers Shane and Abby buy a new house sight unseen. Their plan is to live in the house as they fix it up, while recording their various projects for content. Their excitement about the new venture is short-lived. Shane begins sleepwalking at night which they both find amusing at first, but his nightly journeys start to take a darker tone. Cameras around the house also capture moments that suggest the house is haunted. Their search for answers starts to fracture their relationship as Abby fears what Shane might do next.

Sleep Stalker is a pretty decent found-footage chiller. It all feels very familiar, but it’s well made, and the mystery of the house is handled well in the finale. It does, however, take a while for the story to develop into something particularly interesting.

Sleep Stalker is a bit of a slow burn. The first half of the movie is all devoted to setting up the story and establishing atmosphere. I appreciate the time taken to gradually ramp up the haunting and possession aspects of the movie, but the earlier sections drag a little. It starts to feel repetitive, with Shane’s nightly sleepwalks (and the occasional moving object) not really progressing the story much. There are moments of foreshadowing during this time, but only a few. It’s not until about 30 minutes in that we get our first interesting character moment when we see Abby’s true feelings about Shane’s actions start to rise to the surface.

I do have a nitpick with the story though, and it has to do with the characterization of Abby. She is dismissive of any supernatural causes for what’s happening, to the point where she seems suspicious. Like she’s hiding something. She literally does hide something from Shane at one point, but nothing ever really comes from that moment. We get explanations that she’s just scared, and she outwardly expresses the fact that she thinks it’s all in Shane’s head, but her actions seem to suggest something else is going on with her. I didn’t need some sort of big confession, but her refusal to even entertain the idea of the supernatural becomes strange, especially since we know she is watching the footage of things happening around the house (doors opening, objects moving, etc.).

That said, Gabrielle Montes de Oca does great in the role of Abby, so I still bought what I was watching even if I wasn’t as certain about the way the character was handled. Josh Gilmer is also great as Shane, and the pair of them helped keep me intrigued even in the slower moments of the film.

Star Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (average)

Pacing issues and the lack of a big impact until the very end is why I’m rating Sleep Stalker a 2.5. I felt my interest starting to fade until the halfway point of the movie. But I enjoy the ending a lot, and that goes a long way in giving a good overall impression for the entire film. I’d recommend Sleep Stalker for fans of supernatural found footage who don’t want anything too scary.

Sleep Stalker is currently available as a digital rental on platforms including Amazon Prime Video.