Nightmare on Bland Street
There are bad horror movies, and then there’s Mara — a film so lethargic it could put Freddy Krueger to sleep. Directed by Clive Tonge in his feature debut (and possibly his last if there’s any justice in cinema), Mara attempts to turn sleep paralysis into the next great supernatural terror. Unfortunately, it only succeeds in recreating the feeling of being trapped — not by a demon, but by ninety minutes of dim lighting, flat dialogue, and Olga Kurylenko looking like she’s regretting every career choice since Quantum of Solace.
The film promises us an exploration of guilt, insomnia, and demonic folklore. What it delivers is an unintentional cure for insomnia. Watching it feels like taking a NyQuil shot laced with exposition.
The Plot: The Same Old Nightmare
The Ring had a cursed videotape. It Follows had sexually transmitted death. Mara has… sleep paralysis. It’s like the filmmakers looked at a sleep disorder and said, “Yeah, that’ll do.”
The story kicks off when a suburban family patriarch dies under mysterious circumstances — specifically, a “demon sat on his chest.” His wife Helena (whom everyone immediately assumes is insane) insists that the culprit is Mara, a mythological sleep demon who suffocates the guilty. Criminal psychologist Kate Fuller (Olga Kurylenko) is called in to assess the situation, presumably because the script needed someone to say “I don’t believe in demons” for the next hour and a half.
Kate soon discovers that all the victims share one thing in common: guilt. Which means Mara, apparently, is less a supernatural killer and more a freelance therapist who makes house calls. People fall asleep, wake up paralyzed, see a creepy figure in the shadows, and then die. Repeat until credits roll or your remote control breaks.
Olga Kurylenko vs. The Sleep Demon (and the Script)
Let’s talk about Olga Kurylenko. A talented actress when given material worth her time, here she spends the entire movie alternating between disbelief, mild concern, and what appears to be a desperate need for caffeine. She’s less of a protagonist and more of an audience surrogate for people who wish they were watching something else.
Her performance is the cinematic equivalent of a sleep study — she sits in dark rooms, stares at monitors, and occasionally gasps at something moving slightly out of frame. By the end, you start rooting for the demon, if only to shake her awake.
Meet Mara: The Demon Who Doesn’t Even Try
Now, let’s address the film’s supposed big bad: Mara, the sleep demon herself, played by Javier Botet — a gifted performer known for his work in Mama, The Conjuring 2, and REC. Sadly, even Botet’s inhuman contortions can’t save this sleepwalking production.
Mara appears in a few fleeting glimpses, mostly lurking at the end of hallways or sitting on people’s chests like a badly animated yoga instructor. She’s all limbs and shadow and zero personality — the horror equivalent of a low-budget screensaver. Every time she’s supposed to terrify, she instead inspires a shrug and the thought, “I bet this looked scarier in the concept art.”
If demons had performance reviews, Mara’s would read: “Needs improvement in punctuality, scare tactics, and overall effort.”
Support Group from Hell
One of the movie’s main set pieces is a support group for sleep paralysis sufferers. It’s a brilliant idea in theory — people swapping horror stories while trying not to nod off. In execution, it’s a slog of exposition disguised as therapy.
There’s Dougie (Craig Conway), a jittery war veteran who hasn’t slept in years, and Saul, who looks like the kind of guy who listens to true crime podcasts unironically. They explain the “rules” of Mara’s curse like it’s a particularly lazy video game tutorial:
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You see her while paralyzed.
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You get a red eye mark.
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She touches you.
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You die when you fall asleep.
That’s right, Mara has stages — like a boss fight, except slower and with more mumbling. Watching Dougie try to stay awake with alarms, caffeine, and rock music feels less like horror and more like an energy drink commercial gone wrong.
Fear by Numbers
The real tragedy of Mara isn’t that it’s incompetent — it’s that it’s so aggressively generic. Every scare is telegraphed like a bad knock-knock joke. Camera pans? Check. Sudden loud noise? Check. Monster behind the protagonist in the mirror? Check, check, and check again.
The cinematography tries to be moody but ends up looking like a dimly lit IKEA catalog. The color palette is so drained of life that even the demon looks anemic. The sound design is equally uninspired, full of those cheap “BWAAAAM”noises that make you wonder if the editor fell asleep on the keyboard.
And for a movie about sleep paralysis, the irony is staggering — you’ll have no trouble falling asleep watching it.
Sleep Paralysis: The Real Star
The movie desperately wants to be “psychological horror.” It name-drops sleep disorders, Brugada syndrome, and guilt-induced nightmares as if tossing around medical jargon will distract you from the script’s lack of pulse. But instead of exploring the terrifying ambiguity between science and superstition, Mara settles for being The Babadook’s dumber cousin — all concept, no execution.
Imagine if Inception and The Bye Bye Man had a baby that failed out of film school. That’s Mara. It wants to talk about the intersection of trauma and sleep but ends up saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be spooky if people just… died in bed?”
The Guilt Trip from Hell
As Kate investigates, she learns that Mara targets the guilty — which means every character has a conveniently traumatic backstory. Dougie accidentally killed innocents during the war, Saul’s mother died because of him, Helena feels responsible for her husband’s death, and Kate feels guilty for, well, everything.
By the end, we’re knee-deep in confessionals. If Mara were an actual support group, the demon wouldn’t need to kill anyone — she’d just wait for them to drown in self-pity. The theme of guilt could’ve been profound, but it’s handled with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer made of bad dialogue.
The Ending: Sleep Tight (Forever)
The finale attempts to go out with a bang but instead delivers a mild yawn. Kate realizes that forgiving yourself is the key to surviving Mara — which is ironic, because forgiving this movie is impossible. She tries to save little Sophie from the demon, only to fall asleep herself. Mara lunges at the camera in a jump scare so predictable it should come with a snooze button.
The credits roll, and the only real horror is realizing you stayed awake for the entire thing.
Final Verdict: Narcolepsy, Now in Theaters
Mara is proof that even the scariest folklore can be strangled to death by mediocrity. It’s a film where sleep paralysis is contagious — not because of supernatural forces, but because the pacing is so slow your eyelids give up out of protest.
Olga Kurylenko deserves better. Javier Botet deserves better. Horror fans definitely deserve better. The only entity that wins here is Mara herself, who feeds on guilt — and after sitting through this movie, I assure you, guilt is all you’ll feel.
Final Score: 1.5 out of 5 Sleep Masks.
It’s not terrifying, it’s not thrilling, and the only thing Mara successfully murders… is your attention span.
