There's a sequence near the finale of Sleepless that the "slow step" button on your DVD remote was made for: It's a gunshot through the head of the villain, probably the nastiest piece of gore effect you'll see all year and one of the all-time great gunshot wounds. Those with a stomach for that sort of thing -- those who renew their subscription to {~Fangoria months before it runs out -- will notice that makeup effects supervisor Sergio Stivalleti has managed to make it look as if a speck of light is emerging from the hole in the unfortunate victim's head as the flesh is blown away. The full-screen digital transfer of Sleepless suffers from Dario Argento's selection of film stock; apparently, he uses a brand that makes every day look overcast and grainy, or perhaps it was the weather, whatever. The overall impression is one of continuous darkness around the borders the way cheapie color films looked in the 1970s. The opening page of the interactive menu is pretty cool when you activate it -- a stylized skull rushes at you with a brooding scream -- and the Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds clean and clear (it's also in Dolby 2.0). |