Sleeper's Wake sees a man awake in hospital after a tragic nightmarish turn of events that have now left him a widower without his daughter, alone and empty. When he decides to get away from the world for a while, and holes up in a chalet in a forest region, things seem to be easing off. He can consume as much alcohol as he wants, without attracting attention, and live as quietly as he could ever dream of. That, of course, comes tumbling down when he meets a young girl, crying and with a black eye. The parental element of him still strong, he must investigate what happened, which leads him to finding the girl's father, another man full of grief, dealing with it through religion.

The two strike up a friendship, and between this and an awkwardly burgeoning romance between the young girl and our protagonist, the film seeks to deal with getting over grief by way of human interaction.

That is, until the final act, wherein everything we know about the film changes, and someone hits the dials up a couple more notches. What starts as a subtle, well played drama with some exceptional dramatic beats and flawless cinematography goes absolutely insane as the final sequence rolls around. Certainly if you enjoy fisticuffs with animals, the film provides plenty of that as the man vs. nature thing is pushed to the very epitome of those words. A man dressed akin to Mowgli, staring at a primate staring back at him, ready to fight. This is a scene from what is, for at least an hour, a understated drama. Without spoiling anything, the film goes absolutely insane. And whilst it may not completely work tonally, it's certainly something so utterly memorable that it turns Sleeper's Wake from a relatively good drama (albeit with some shaky acting and glacial pacing) to something that sticks with you.

Beyond that, as stated earlier, the film's style is phenomenal. Without being overly glossy or having a budget to work with, the film embraces the natural world in an adoring fashion, with plenty of slow moving shots that just take in the world's detail in stunning degrees, and no shaking the camera for the sake of getting more intense shots as well. Everything is shot with an interest in making it not look awful, a rarity in modern cinema that doesn't go unnoticed.

The film is adapted from a novel, and director Barry Berk is the man adapting it, whilst some scenes play out a little too conventionally, he does make his mark in his first feature with an opening sequence that doesn't have much dialogue, and is a particularly striking rendition of grief on a human, and the climax more than finds its way into the memory of anyone who sees it.

Sleeper's Wake has some flaws, with characters who don't really reach their point properly, and a third act addition of one character going missing is one storyline too many, since the resolve is severely lacking, but there's a lot to respect in Sleeper's Wake, from the dramatic to the insane to, quite simply, the look of the film. For a debut, it's assured indeed, and whilst it's not a great film, there's plenty of promise in it.