Before I Go To Sleep Is An Amnesia Thriller Youll Hope To Forget

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Amnesiac Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) struggles to trust her husband Ben (Colin Firth). Laurie Sparham/Clarius Entertainment hide caption

itoggle caption Laurie Sparham/Clarius Entertainment

Amnesiac Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman) struggles to trust her husband Ben (Colin Firth).

Laurie Sparham/Clarius Entertainment

The bloodshot eyeball that opens to greet a brand new day and I mean brand new day in the thriller Before I Go To Sleep belongs to wealthy English homemaker Christine Lucas (Nicole Kidman). Christine suffers from psychogenic amnesia the fright moviemaker's best friend. She can store memories during the day but they reliably vanish overnight marooning poor Christine in what is either a hapless attempt to upstage Memento or a remake of Groundhog Day in noir.

Unlike Bill Murray's sour weatherman and because she's you know a girl Christine is 100 percent victim staggering through life armed only with whispered queries and startled bunny reaction shots. When she looks in the mirror she sees a woman 10 years older than she believes herself to be.

Christine lives in a lonely house in the wintry woods near London where it rains and rains. Friends and family hover all of them including her slightly too devoted husband Ben played by Colin Firth waving flags ostentatiously marked unreliable narrator. The couple may or may not have a son who might be dead or not.

Men keep bossing Christine around and she has no idea which of them is friend foe or lover. Her therapist Dr. Nasch is played by the excellent Mark Strong a man of inescapably villainous countenance and therefore maybe a good guy Dr. Nasch's method skews to the unorthodox and over involved. He gives Christine a camera to record a video diary as a memory aid but he's also an inappropriate hugger. Is it Nasch or Ben or Christine's bestie (Anne Marie Duff) who's responsible for the daily memory shards of the past trauma that has brought Christine low

For all I know the novel (by S.J. Watson) on which Before I Go To Sleep is based is full of nuance and surprise. If so writer director Rowan Jaffe whose resume boasts an unnecessary 2010 remake of the great 1947 noir Brighton Rock has mangled the job and with a heavy hand. Comedy is unintended character is binary Ben murmurs sweet nothings into Christine's neck then shoots grim stares at her Nasch comes on either sinister or hyper protective. Mostly we see the backs of heads. The lighting is more murky than oblique as Christine's violent past flashes back in a dirty ochre palette with a throbbing heart soundtrack in back.

Worse yet the movie has nothing fresh and plenty that's old and nasty to say about violence against women. This sort of exploitation has been a Hollywood staple forever but Before I Go To Sleep is a singularly unpleasant specimen that takes pleasure in smacking a woman around and worse in repeated graphic detail before finally throwing her a pro forma bone of empowerment. With luck Kidman will erase this inept thriller from her memory as quickly as it leaves theaters.

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