The trailer for Nicole Kidman suspense-thriller Before I Go to Sleep, based on the SJ Watson novel of the same name, has arrived and calls to mind the kind of short-term memory loss movies that resemble Memento rather than say Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.
Christina Lucas (Kidman) suffers amnesia after surviving an attempted murder. It strips her of her memory, and each day she must record a video documenting what she has learned before she forgets the next morning (like Drew Barrymore did in 50 First Dates). Christina leans on the aid of her husband Ben (Colin Firth) and her doctor (Mark Strong), but as she reassembles more pieces to the puzzle of her accident, its not unlikely that everything they are telling her is a lie.
Not unlike that Nolan thriller, it seems when audiences see Before I Go to Sleep they will be forced to seek out pieces of the exposition that are sprinkled throughout the story. Stories like these allow writers more creative ways to implement wits than they do in the traditional Hollywood structure. And like in classic crime novels where the reader gets their world turned upside down at any random paragraph, any scene can be a twist.
This gives Before I Go to Sleep more potential than the run-of-the-mill thrillers. Its script is penned by Rowan Joffe, whose credentials include scripting the George Clooney movie The American as well as the modern zombie thriller 28 Weeks Later. Ridley Scott (The Counselor) serves as executive producer and its distributed by Millennium Films.
Before I Go to Sleep is set to hit theaters September 12.
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