I get a little frustrated by movies that seemingly don’t know when to end.

I was notoriously not a big fan of Nicholas Cage’s acclaimed movie Pig because, to me, it felt like a sixty minute storyline poorly stretched out to a runtime of ninety minutes. In the interest of making it feature length, they sacrificed good pacing and storytelling, and it all felt very strenuous to me. There’s no need to do that! You can definitely make a solid film in under an hour! Not everything needs to be big.

So imagine my joy when today’s offering was found on Tubi as a forty-seven minute outing! Finally, a movie that recognizes how to keep itself wrapped up! The movie today is Mr. Sandman.

Mr. Sandman is the tale of a young girl named Zoe–I figure the character to be seven or eight years old–who is staying up one night with her grandmother and watching very old horror flicks. Zoe’s mom instructs her to go to bed, and it is at that time that grandma issues a warning about Mr. Sandman: he may bring good dreams to pleasant children who sleep through the night, but he abducts those kiddies that do not. Grandma warns that he comes at the witching hour, then off to bed she goes.

Zoe brushes this warning off and continues watching television until she falls asleep on the couch, but shortly later on, she awakens in the middle of the night and has to make her way to bed. With 3am creeping upon her, fear takes hold of Zoe that Mr. Sandman will find her still awake. Will she make it back to sleep in time?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The presentation of this short film makes everything feel big, as if you are living it from a child’s perspective. Just the act of creeping downstairs to gather up a beloved childhood toy feels desolate and creepy. And then you get into the rest of the movie where shadows and open windows and music boxes are terrifying, and it all effectively conveys the horror of being a scared, small child again.

I know the film I am about to reference is wildly divisive, but Mr. Sandman is all of the best aspects of Skinamarink. It is all about reviving the buried fears that live deep inside of us from childhood. It’s about making the innocuous seem sinister. You don’t have to have liked Skinamarink to dig Mr. Sandman, but the two films definitely share DNA.

+ As noted before the Ups And Downs, director Matthew I. Schmidt had the sense to keep this short picture to about 40 minutes in length. Too many other screenwriters or directors would try to stretch this concept past its breaking point to get to a feature length run time of at least 70 minutes or so. But Schmidt keeps his wits about him and lets the story run for as long as it can go without straining itself. It’s just the story of one girl trying to fall asleep one night, and it doesn’t make sense for that to go over an hour in runtime. 

I’m very curious to see what Matthew Schmidt does next, because this film really shows his talent beyond his years. He has a great eye for shots, and as noted here, he has the wisdom a director needs to know what is best for his picture. I’ll be keeping an eye out for his next production.

– The effects work is mostly fine, especially for what I am assuming the budget was. There is one scene where the evil Mr. Sandman appears, and it has some pretty poor computer generated effects. I would have preferred the movie not include that because it did take me out of the film for a minute. And like I said: I appreciate that they accomplished what they did with what they had available, but given that I complimented Schmidt’s restraint elsewhere, it would have been nice to see him exercise the same decision making on the one bad effect in the picture. 

It’s not a terribly big deal, but when everything else looks as good as it does because of the way it was all shot, you really notice the unimpressive dark CGI splotches moving around Mr. Sandman. These are filmmaking growing pains, though; you want to do everything you can with your picture, so I’m sure Schmidt convinced himself it wasn’t that bad and rolled with it.

– The movie is incredibly minimalistic in terms of dialogue. It’s very much all about moments and scope and atmosphere. And that’s for the best because when there is dialogue… it’s just honestly not the best. Hailey Kate Schmidt shows exceptional talent as a physical actress–the way she reacts and her sudden movements are striking–but her line delivery still needs some work (obviously, though, she is a little girl; she has plenty of opportunity to develop that).

There is a scene early on where the grandmother, kind of out of nowhere, decides to horrify Zoe with the story of Mr. Sandman, and it’s a strange moment. It isn’t loving or even teasing; it feels malicious. Who talks to their young grand-daughter like that, I wondered? Look, I don’t want to speak ill of the actors here, especially Hailey, but you have to take what Ups and Downs the movie gives you. And I thought one of the few weak elements was the dialogue.

OVERALL

Mr. Sandman is a great gem you can find on Tubi, and–in addition to the short movie itself–it is followed up by about a ten minute featurette interviewing the talent behind the picture. It is what it is as far as budget and quality go, but I’ve absolutely seen movies made for probably a similar amount (or more!) that lack its spark, creativity, and mature handling. It’s an easy watch I definitely recommend.