With Freddy Krueger long absent from theatre screens, other sleep creeps are starting to step up to try to fill the void he has left behind. Last year we had the "sleep paralysis kills" supernatural horror film DEAD AWAKE, which was very obviously inspired by A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET but fell well short of ELM STREET in the quality department, and soon we'll be seeing director Clive Tonge's feature debut MARA… which also happens to be a "sleep paralysis kills" supernatural horror film.
Written by Jonathan Frank and starring one of my favorite Bond girls, QUANTUM OF SOLACE's Olga Kurylenko (you may also know her from OBLIVION, CENTURION, or HITMAN), MARA has the following synopsis:
Criminal psychologist Kate Fuller is assigned to the murder of a man who has seemingly been strangled in his sleep by his wife and the only witness is their eight-year-old daughter, Sophie. As Kate digs into the mystery of an ancient demon which kills people in their sleep, she experiences the same petrifying symptoms as all previous victims and spirals through a chilling nightmare to save herself and Sophie before she dares fall asleep again.
Kurylenko is joined in the cast by Javier Botet, Mitch Eakins, Lance E. Nichols, Rosie Fellner, Mackenzie Imsand, Dandy Barrett, Craig Conway, Melissa Bolona, and Gia Skova.
While MARA does not yet have a release date, it does have a trailer, which has been released online and can be seen below. It looks interesting to me. I don't expect it to rival A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but hopefully it will be an improvement over DEAD AWAKE.