Don't Go To Sleep (1982) and 80s Domestic Horror

The essence of a subgenre is formula and the power of formula is in the control over difference. When two objects participate in the same formula, the variables that can be altered are limited otherwise the formula simply evaporates. Thus in a formulaic film difference from another formula-participant, which is to say, how the variables are set within the formulaic limits, is the source of significance.

In the '80s, a very popular formula was the Disintegrating-Family film. A nuclear family, usually moving into a new home, is besieged by a spiritual influence and often torn apart. Burnt Offerings (1976) is one of the first of these films. It's followed by Stranger in Our House (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979), Poltergeist (1980), Don't Go to Sleep (1982), Invitation to Hell (1984), Pet Sematary (1989) (the novel was written in 1983), and others, many of which are TV movies capitalizing on the success of Poltergeist. Even the Europeans got involved in the trend, with films like Fulci's The House by the Cemetery (1981).

In most of these films the spiritual influence is symbolic of, or a phenomenological manifestation of, guilt. In Poltergeist, for instance, the spirits from an Indian burial ground torment a nuclear family of privileged, White Americans. The torment even begins coming from the television, the modern family's hearth. The ghosts represent White Guilt quite plainly. This fulfills the need for (subconsciously guilty) privileged, White filmgoers of the '80s to see that privileged life attacked in fiction, where it's safe, so they can go home and comfortably continue living their privileged lives guilt-free. Pet Sematary is of the same mould, except it doesn't allow the audience to leave with the comfortable re-repression Poltergeist provides. In Invitation to Hell, the spiritual influence is a little more direct, the demon-owned country club representing instead the drive to material success at any cost--even one's soul! The film is nevertheless shaming the audience for their materialism and privileged lifestyle while allowing them to go home with this shame repressed, assured that they too have the willpower to put family first. Burnt Offerings is a little more subtle, its modus operandi being to have the house play nuclear family tensions against each other: the father attacks the child, the mother becomes obsessed with housekeeping, the father becomes a wimp, and so forth. The film shows how the American family has lost its way, becoming a sacrifice to (a burnt offering to) the comforts and luxuries that should be at its service.

Don't Go to Sleep is one of those made-for-TV Poltergeist clones. A family moves into a new house, of course, and the little girl of the family (of course) becomes convinced her dead sister is talking to her. At first she's frightened. But as the sister starts telling her to do malicious things to her family, she comes to trust the ghost. That sentence may not make much moral sense, but it's what happens. Unlike Poltergeist, however, the family doesn't escape intact, but rather, as in Burnt Offerings and Pet Sematary, succumbs to the evil influence, leaving nearly everyone either dead or mad.

Don't Go to Sleep falls into the guilt category as well. The guilt isn't in this case ideological, however. The family has lost a daughter in a car crash and now everyone in the family, grandma, dad, mom, little sister, and possibly little brother all blame themselves and each other. And why shouldn't they? Grandma pressed dad into drinking an extra martini. And mom agreed. And dad was driving. And sis and bro were playing that prank. Well, they shouldn't because it was all an accident. And because guilt is an extremely destructive emotion.

What I liked about Don't Go to Sleep is the way it deals with the issue of guilt itself rather than making it a weapon against traditional family structure and/or privileged White folks. (Being White, having money, having a happy family isn't anything to feel guilty over, anyway.) Rather than getting much-needed psychological help, which the narrative's psychologist recommends to them, they try to press on and endure the tragedy. The longer they wait, the more powerful the guilt becomes and soon the little girl begins to murder her family under the guise of avenging her dead sister.

By dealing with guilt in this way, Don't Go to Sleep actually takes the opposite approach of its fellow Family Disintegration films: the family is not being destroyed because it deserves it; it's being destroyed because of the feelings of guilt, it's own subconscious desire to be destroyed. Most importantly, the film acknowledges that this guilt should be overcome. This privileged, bourgeois, White, nuclear family is innocent, but is being destroyed because it has internalized the guilt found in films like Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, Pet Sematary, and Invitation to Hell. A film like Poltergeist implicates the affluent, White family in guilt but refrains from punishing them. The family flees to safety. Thus some critics have seen Poltergeist as vindicating the traditional family structure. Don't Go to Sleep doesn't have to vindicate the family; the family needs to stop--excuse the irony--beating itself up. And this is a much more enduring truth than the ideological messages in the other films. While it may or may not be true that the bourgeois, nuclear family is oppressive, its oppression won't last forever. But guilt will always be oppressive.

Also interesting is how the film places the responsibility for what happens upon the family. With Poltergeist and all the others mentioned, the family is assaulted from without: Satan disguised as Susan Lucci (Invitation to Hell), a parasitic house (Burnt Offerings), a poltergeist. With Don't Go to Sleep the assault is from within, the guilt-ridden madness of the girl in a family of self-absorbed (because also guilt-ridden) people. With its downbeat, creepy ending, Sleep perhaps wakes its audience to the need to forgive itself, through therapy if necessary.

While these permutations in the formula fascinate me, the way the film itself plays out is only moderately interesting and occasionally laughable. The first thirty minutes are strong, even creepy at times. But the domestic drama and the dull machinations of the little girl soon take over. Ruth Gordon, as ever, steals the show with her eccentric grandma. Unfortunately, she leaves the film halfway through and the unintentionally funny little girl becomes our lifeboat.