Did you sleep well last night? Did you have any bad dreams? Or maybe you couldn’t fall asleep for several hours and stared at the ceiling all night long? These four movies may help you figure out what is keeping you up or stops you from getting a good rest.
Although it’s probably the most popular movie about sleep, Sleeping Beauty isn’t the only movie about sleep. Hollywood has churned out dozens of films that help you know what happens after we close our eyes, or don’t close our eyes.
But do movies depict the truth about sleep, or much of their plot is just cinematic license? Well, filmmakers definitely play with supernatural and unrealistic details to make the story more exciting and engaging. But they also use the realities of slumber so that we can all relate to those characters who can’t fall asleep.
Laying comfortably in your cozy wooden bed and not sure what to watch before going to sleep or when you can’t sleep? Here are four popular movies about sleep disorders you can add to your Watch List.
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1. Insomnia (2002)
Remember those series of sleepless nights that make you feel like a walking zombie in the morning? Well, if your answer is “yes,” you’ll be able to relate to the main character in the movie Insomnia.
Staring big Hollywood names like Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, and Maura Tierney, Insomnia is an American Psychological thriller that perfectly shows the consequences of insomnia on one’s mental and physical wellbeing.
The movie is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian thriller and tells the story of a Los Angeles police detective whose job makes it difficult for him to have a good night’s sleep. Will Dormer (Al Pacino) is sent by his superiors to Alaska to investigate a case of murder, together with another detective. Yet, as the story unfolds, Dormer accidentally shoots his colleague during the investigation and covers the whole thing up.
After these events, Dormer starts to experience insomnia triggered by his guilt over killing the other detective. What’s more, the seasonal perpetual daylight in Alaska doesn’t help him to fall asleep either.
Despite being the typical psychological thriller, which’s plot surrounds a murder investigation, the movie Insomnia really underlines some of the realities of insomnia as a sleep disorder. The movie shows the idea that personal, financial, and occupational stress can make our ability to fall asleep take a huge toll.
As shown in the movie, insomnia affects our ability to function normally during waking hours (Dormer starts experiencing difficulties with proceeding with the investigation). From mood disturbances to memory problems, decreased energy and motivation, and decreased work performance, these are all symptoms experienced by people who struggle with insomnia.
2. The Machinist (2004)
Can you imagine what would be like to be unable to sleep for a whole year? Well, medically speaking, you probably won’t survive that long. In fact, the longest recorded time without sleep is approximately 264 hours, meaning 11 consecutive days. Now, only try to imagine for one second how it would feel like to not sleep for 365 days.
Starring Christian Bale, the movie The Machinist tells the story of Trevor Reznik, a machinist who is struggling with insomnia and psychological problems. His inability to sleep leads to extreme fatigue, causing him to cut off a co-worker’s hand accidentally. After being fired for the accident, Reznik’s mental and physical state starts to get even worse because he also starts experiencing paranoia and delusion.
His severe insomnia case makes the character doubt his own sanity, which underlines the toll one’s mental well-being takes after several sleepless nights. He then starts to keep his daily diaries of events in order to be able to remember what’s real and what’s not.
What’s more, the inability to sleep also makes Reznik’s body to take a major toll, and he starts becoming thinner by the day. Moreover, he soon begins to experience societal rejection too, due to the accident and the fact that people around him can’t understand what is going on with him.
3. Fight Club (1999)
If an entire year without sleep would severely affect your mind and body, so would six months without sleep, as shown in Fight Club.
Another popular movie that explores the tool our bodies and minds take due to insomnia is Fight Club. The American film stars popular names like Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. Edward Norton’s character, an average office worker, is suffering from severe insomnia, a sleep disorder that ends up impacting his life tremendously.
To cope with his insomniac nights, the narrator, Edward Norton’s character, starts to engage in new wee-hours activities such as an underground “fight club” with a mysterious stranger Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt.
Towards the end, we find out that there’s much more going on in the narrator’s mind, a twist triggered by, spoiler alert, his dissociative identity disorder.
The character’s sleep problems caused by his dissociative identity disorder are a reality that many people suffering from the same disorder experience. Studies show that patients who suffer from dissociative identity disorder tend to have more sleep problems and lower quality of night’s sleep.
4. The Nightmare (2015)
Have you ever experienced the inability to wake up from a nightmare? You can’t move or speak, and you’re conscious that you’re having a nightmare. That’s how sleep paralysis feels like, only 1000 times worse.
The Nightmare is an American documentary film that focuses on the topic of sleep paralysis. The film follows eight people suffering from this sleep disorder and tries to recreate the eight participants’ experiences as described by them.
The purpose of the documentary film is to find out whether or not there are any similarities between the experiences of the eight people struggling with sleep paralysis. The results? They go beyond all people having the same sleep disorder. They have all experienced hallucinations, seeing terrifying figures, including a black or faceless figure that moves towards them.
Sleep paralysis is a state of being conscious while having a nightmare but having the inability to move, react, or speak. It often implies hallucinations, both visual and auditive, and results in a lot of fear. Imagine the worst nightmare you’ve ever had and now think what it would be like not to be able to wake up from it. Sounds scary, right?