A young woman suffers from sleep paralysis (SP) and becomes the victim of a demon. She is forced to seek help from a local priest. This is how the new horror film The Last Rite is described in the magazine ScreenGeek.
Sleep paralysis manifests itself in the plot as a shadow of a man in a hat, accompanied by an oppressive feeling, including physical and psychological pressure. Visits of the man in the hat are very rare and usually happen when the victim wakes up and finds herself unable to move.
However, the only representation of SP in the film is rather a reflection of the heroine’s inner state. She wakes up in a sweat and looks up with eyes full of horror. Someone invisible pulls the blanket off her, and then begins to strangle her. This, of course, is nothing like real sleep paralysis, since the heroine is moving. But, then again, movie goers would probably not be interested in just watching a motionless body.
For the same reason, the demon in attributed the specific form of a man in a hat and is shown to be real. This is not a story about a phase state (a term by which, in addition to SP, we refer to lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, etc.); it is a thriller about obsession – a fantasy on the theme “what if the sleep paralysis demon was real?”
How would you represent sleep paralysis in a movie?
The film was released in 2021 and is available on Amazon.
