Any of Mila’s attempts to sleep will be interrupted. The cardinal rule is simple: no sleeping. A robotic female voice comes over the speaker informing her that she’s been inducted into a program called Recreation. Exposed piping and harsh fluorescent lighting line the walls, an old loud-speaker is mounted above a locked door, and a chair with restraints sits at the center. Mila awakens in another seemingly standard-issue dismal concrete room that could easily have been the back room of the fish shop. After dumping a handful of rocks and her new ichthyoid into a woefully undersized fish tank, a plastic bag is placed over her head rendering her unconscious. We follow Mila ( Polina Davydova), as she returns to her apartment after visiting the most uninviting concrete aquatic pet shop. Sleepless Beauty wastes very little time before kicking into gear. That’s not to say a retread of those old haunting grounds has no merit, but one must learn from the mistakes and victories of the past. The biggest and most interesting questions of the subgenre have all been, for the most part, previously raised and answered by the likes of Saw and Hostel. In fairness to the filmmakers, the torture porn genre is an inherently shallow pool in which to dive. Were the questions heady and rich, thick on the bone for one to pick and chew over, it might be laudable. Writer Aleksandra Khvaleeva and director Pavel Khvaleev spend most of Sleepless Beauty’s 83-minute runtime raising questions that either remain unanswered or result in answers that only raise further questions. Some films use these implements to raise questions they have no intention of ever answering, and on occasion it becomes apparent to the audience that their own intellectual shortcomings are not to blame the filmmakers themselves simply do not have the answers either. Often a film will raise questions for its audience, drawing on their powers of deduction or ability to extrapolate, sometimes using metaphor or symbolism to help guide us toward our final solution. One of the biggest takeaways from the above definition is the intention of procuring an answer.
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