In her first solo feature film, the director Laura Alvea ('Ánimas') signs a psychological thriller with timid escapes into fantasy and horror. You can see his affection for the genre in the references that he uses and that he deliberately exposes in his film. To support the gothic inspiration of 'The Sleeping Woman', he makes his protagonist, without going any further, pick up from a shelf 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson. And in his way of playing with identities and the idea of the double, one can sense his fascination with Brian DePalma.
But, even if the impulse is honest, 'The Sleeping Woman' it doesn't take off in any direction. Starring Almudena Amor, whose presence is the most interesting thing about the film: has the face and temperance of the most emblematic horror actresses of the 70s, it tells the story of a nurse who moves to an isolated house to take care of a girl who is in a coma. She has been hired by her husband (Javier Rey) from the sleeping woman.
The potential of the starting point fades in a flat and stretched narrative, also somewhat confusing, in an inconsistent atmosphere, in a weak sense of suspense. There is technical skill and elegance in certain staging decisions, but also a evident lack of interesting, ingenious or more or less attractive ideas in the execution of fantastic or horror scenes. Musical excesses don't help either.
