The Scariest Made-for-TV Horror Movie Ever Made is Now Free to Stream
I’m something of a made-for-television movie connoisseur. That means, in operational terms, simply that I watch a lot (a frightening amount) of made-for-television movies. Principally, the scary ones. I’m discussing classics from the BBC and ABC Horror Movie of the Week programming list. Sweetly, I first got into them with my mom, who considered them a cornerstone of my horror education. I couldn’t understand the genre without first witnessing wall-crawling goblins in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark or being Bewitched by Elizabeth Montgomery in The Victim.
I’ve seen the good, the bad, and even the ugly, and narrowing down my favorites isn’t straightforward. After all, my list looks considerably different than our own Tyler Doupé’s on the same topic. However, I am willing to concede that Richard Lang’s Don’t Go to Sleep ranks among the best. It’s haunted me since I first watched it streaming several years ago. If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch it, try to stay awake because it’s streaming free online now.
Per IMDB: A young girl begins seeing the ghost of her sister who died in an accident a year earlier.
Don’t Go to Sleep stars Valerie Harper (my girl) and Dennis Weaver as Laura and Phillip, two parents doing their best to put their grief behind them after the death of their daughter. Their two remaining kids are managing well enough, at least until daughter Mary (Robin Ignico) starts chatting with her deceased sister. So far, so conventional. Except, Don’t Go to Sleep, despite its made-for-TV horror movie origins, is anything but traditional. You’ll know exactly what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it.
Put plainly, this movie rips. Hard. I’m wary of sharing more for fear of spoiling the many surprises in store, but trust that Don’t Go to Sleep is far from your respectable haunted house whose cast yields some pedigree. Those things are true, certainly, but Don’t Go to Sleep is a mean movie. It’s a mean, mean movie. It’s also regularly pretty scary, managing more with standard possessed kid tropes than many modern movies ever manage. Now that it’s streaming free, I urge you not to sleep on this hidden made-for-television gem. If only I’d seen the film when it first premiered.
Are you scared yet? Do you have any plans to check out Don’t Go to Sleep? When you do, let me know what you think on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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