Once Upon a Time in the Land of Poor Editing
Every so often, a movie comes along that reminds you that fairy tales were originally meant to scare children. The Curse of Sleeping Beauty does that — but only because it’s so poorly written, it will haunt your dreams for all the wrong reasons.
Directed by Pearry Reginald Teo (whose resume reads like a stack of Hot Topic clearance DVDs), this 2016 horror-fantasy mashup takes the beloved Sleeping Beauty story, strips out the romance, injects it with low-rent paranormal mumbo-jumbo, and somehow still manages to make a movie where nothing interesting happens.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of biting into what you think is a chocolate truffle and realizing it’s a mothball.
The Plot: Once Upon a Yawn
We open with our brooding hero, Thomas Kaiser (Ethan Peck) — a painter so moody he makes Edward Scissorhands look well-adjusted. Thomas keeps having recurring dreams about a beautiful sleeping woman trapped in a gothic nightmare landscape. Naturally, he does what all tortured artists do: stares meaningfully into the middle distance and paints about it.
Then he receives a phone call from a lawyer. Turns out his estranged uncle killed himself and left him an inheritance — a creepy mansion called Kaiser Gardens. Because of course he did. No one ever inherits a condo in these things.
The mansion, it turns out, is the same one from his dreams. (Gasp!) There are mannequins everywhere, which is never a good sign unless you’re redecorating a Forever 21. There’s also a locked door covered in creepy symbols, which Thomas, being a rational man, immediately decides to open later.
He also meets Briar Rose (India Eisley) — the titular Sleeping Beauty — in his dreams, who tells him he must awaken her to break the family curse. It’s less “enchanted princess” and more “vague goth exposition with cheekbones.”
Soon, he teams up with a realtor named Linda (Natalie Hall), whose brother conveniently went missing in the house (because of course he did), and a paranormal investigator named Richard (Bruce Davison), who looks like he’s been phoning in ghost stories since Poltergeist II. Together, they uncover a family curse involving ancient djinn, bloodlines, sealed books, and… I think there’s a door that’s also cursed? Or maybe the book cursed the door. At this point, I stopped trying to make sense of it and just hoped someone would die in an entertaining way.
Characters Who Sleep More Than the Princess
It’s impressive when your Sleeping Beauty isn’t the only one putting people to sleep.
Ethan Peck (yes, the grandson of that Gregory Peck) has the kind of charisma you usually find in a damp towel. His entire performance can be summarized as “confused frowning.” Whether he’s seeing ghosts, uncovering curses, or reading ancient texts, he always looks like someone just told him calculus is back on the menu.
India Eisley as Briar Rose is ethereal, pale, and clearly under the impression she’s in a better movie. She spends 80% of her screen time asleep and the rest whispering lines like “You must awaken me, Thomas” as if she’s trying to sell perfume in a haunted mall.
Natalie Hall as Linda is the “spunky partner” archetype who serves no real purpose other than to deliver exposition and react to things with the emotional range of someone who just stepped in a puddle.
And then there’s Bruce Davison, who looks like he wandered in from a completely different film and decided to stay because there was catering. He’s supposed to be a paranormal expert, but his advice mostly boils down to “You’re cursed, that sucks, wanna open a book about it?”
The Script: Cursed by Its Own Dialogue
The screenplay, co-written by Teo and Josh Nadler, feels like it was assembled from three unrelated movies — a gothic fairy tale, a supernatural thriller, and a poorly translated Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Every line of dialogue feels like a placeholder that accidentally made it into the final cut:
“The bloodline must be bound to the gate that seals the djinn.”
“Only the cursed shall inherit the key to the awakening.”
“What does any of this mean?”
“It means the curse must be lifted by the heir of the bloodline.”
Repeat that loop for 90 minutes and you’ve got the screenplay.
It’s as if the writers put every supernatural cliché into a blender, hit purée, and hoped something coherent would ooze out. Spoiler: it didn’t.
The Horror: Mannequin Challenge (2016 Edition)
This is a horror movie in theory, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual scare anywhere in it. The film relies on mannequins as its main source of terror — because nothing screams “nightmare fuel” like half-dressed department store props lumbering around at two frames per second.
The creatures, when they do appear, look like background extras from a Silent Hill fan film. There’s also a “Veiled Demon” who’s supposed to be terrifying, but mostly resembles a rejected Hellraiser cosplayer covered in gauze.
Even the jump scares feel tired, like the movie itself can’t be bothered. Doors creak. Lights flicker. Someone gasps dramatically at an empty hallway. The scariest part is realizing there’s still 40 minutes left.
The Visuals: Pretty But Pointless
To the film’s credit, it does look nice — in that “shot entirely inside a Spirit Halloween store” kind of way. The production design leans hard into the gothic aesthetic: peeling wallpaper, cobwebs, candles, fog machines running at full blast. It’s atmospheric, sure, but atmosphere without tension is like a haunted house run by real estate agents.
The dream sequences, meant to evoke surreal fairy-tale horror, instead resemble perfume commercials directed by Guillermo del Toro’s intern. There’s a lot of slow-motion fabric and ethereal lighting, but no emotional weight behind it. You don’t feel scared — you feel like you’re watching an expensive music video for Evanescence.
The Climax: Wake Me Up (Inside)
The grand finale promises apocalyptic stakes but delivers something closer to a confused shrug. Thomas finally awakens Briar Rose with his blood — romantic, right? Except instead of breaking the curse, she immediately turns evil, kills the demon, and announces she’s going to unleash hell on Earth.
It’s a twist that could’ve been interesting… if the movie had earned it. Instead, it feels like the writers flipped to a random page of the script and said, “Eh, let’s end it here.”
We’re left with a half-baked apocalypse, a screaming protagonist, and a sense of déjà vu because this exact same endinghas been used in every bad horror film since 2003.
The Verdict: A Fairy Tale for Insomniacs
The Curse of Sleeping Beauty is a cautionary tale — not about curses or demons, but about what happens when you try to turn a 10-page fairy tale into a feature-length franchise starter without a clue or a budget.
It’s too serious to be camp, too dull to be scary, and too confusing to be coherent. You can sense there’s a good movie buried under the layers of exposition and fog machine residue — a gothic fantasy about inherited guilt and cursed beauty — but it never wakes up.
The result? A lifeless slog that makes you wish you could fall into an eternal sleep and skip straight to the credits.
Grade: D
Recommended for: people who thought “Maleficent was too cheerful,” goth teens who decorate their rooms with cursed dreamcatchers, and anyone who enjoys watching pretty people look confused in dark hallways.
