Mystery thrillers are bigger business these days than they have been for a long time, so it’s not all that much of a shock to discover that Before I Go to Sleep is currently in the midst of riding a brand new wave of momentum on Netflix.
In fact, the only real revelation about the star-studded psychological story is that it tanked at the box office first time around, based on the sum of its creative parts. Legendary director Ridley Scott purchased the rights to the novel, and tasked acclaimed second-generation filmmaker Rowan Joffé to write and direct.
The ensemble cast was headed up by Academy Award winners Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, with Mark Strong and Anne-Marie Duff lending support in the Memento-esque tale of a woman suffering from anterograde amnesia who can’t form new memories in the aftermath of forgetting the last 15 years of her life.
Meeting her husband for the first time every morning, fragments of a traumatizing and terrifying past begin to emerge, turning her existence upside down. A decent enough setup, but unfortunately and ironically in equal measure, it was Christopher Nolan’s aforementioned classic that was used as a stick to beat its underwhelming facsimile over the head.
A 37 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a $15 million haul at the box office on a budget north of $20 million saw Before I Go to Sleep buried and bombed, but it’s remembered to find an audience at long last. Per FlixPatrol, it’s arrived as one of the most-watched features on Netflix’s global charts, convincing people to check it out almost a decade after sinking without a trace.
Published: Oct 10, 2023 02:00 am