You ever walk into a movie expecting Stephen King horror and come out wondering if you just watched a weird incest-themed cat hate crime disguised as a monster movie?
Welcome to Sleepwalkers.
Directed by Mick Garris and “written” by Stephen King—though that word should probably be in quotation marks, because this feels less like writing and more like King got bored, high, and tried to one-up his own weirdest short story in one sitting—Sleepwalkers is 90 minutes of genre confusion, softcore Oedipus, and feline vengeance.
It starts out innocent enough—guy moves to a small town with his mom. But quickly we learn that this “guy” (Charles, played with all the charm of a sentient bottle of hair gel by Brian Krause) and his “mom” (Mary, played by Alice Krige, doing her best Queen of Incestuous Darkness) are actually shapeshifting energy vampires who look like melted were-cats from a rejected Thundercats reboot when they drop their human glamor.
Oh, and they’re also romantically involved.
Yes. Romantically. In the full-on, “we kiss and do more” kind of way. Nothing says horror like watching a grown man call his mom “sexy” between draining virgins of their soul juice.
And that’s just the setup.
Once Charles sets his sights on Tanya, a nice, innocent girl played by Mädchen Amick (who honestly deserved a better early ’90s debut), things spiral fast. There’s seduction at a graveyard, a car chase, and then he turns invisible (?) and kills a cop using a corncob as a weapon. Yes, a corncob. This movie really swings for the fences when it comes to death by produce.
You think I’m making this up. I’m not.
The only creatures that can kill these incest-beasts? Cats. Just regular house cats. Apparently they’re the ultimate nemesis of the Sleepwalkers. And there’s a scene where dozens of them swarm the house like a furry biblical plague. This might be the first horror movie where the final boss is Mr. Whiskers.
The film is unintentionally hilarious, incredibly awkward, and somehow both too gross and too boring at the same time. It tries to be sexy, but feels like it was directed by someone who has never had sex and thinks touching hands is pornographic. It tries to be scary, but the villains are allergic to cats and drive around in a Camaro blasting faux-80s rock music. It’s like The Lost Boys met Oedipus Rex in a litter box.
Even the cameos are weird. Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, and Stephen King himself all show up at random like ghosts of better movies, as if to say, “Yeah, we’re in this mess too. Sorry.”
By the final act, the movie devolves into a flaming-cat-filled showdown that ends with Mom Sleepwalker exploding in a pile of rubble, charred fur, and half-baked metaphors. You walk away wondering who greenlit this and why they weren’t stopped.
Final Verdict
Sleepwalkers is what happens when Stephen King eats expired cheese, naps too long, and wakes up convinced that incestuous vampire-cat-people is the next big thing. It’s a sweaty, baffling fever dream with the emotional weight of a Goosebumps episode and the logic of a broken lava lamp.
Only watch this if you’re drunk, a cat lover, or a completionist trying to suffer through the entire King-verse.
1.5 out of 5 angry tabby cats.
.5 for Mädchen Amick. 1 for the cats. Nothing for the incest fur-beasts.
