Sleepless Society: Nyctophobia Review

Nyctophobia (2019) was the second of the Sleepless Society: The Series miniseries I watched, but it was the first to be released. It has twists, but thankfully it’s a lot less complicated than Insomnia.

Meena is still grieving the death of her young son, Arm, when a boy who looks like him shows up at the hospital where she works and claims to be Arm’s reincarnation. Meena tries to remain sceptic, but slowly begins to accept the idea that it’s possible the boy is telling the truth thanks to the influence of Sita, a spiritual leader. Meena’s friends, Karn, who’s been infatuated with her for years, and Wan, a therapist, remain suspicious. However, the new Arm proves to be both resourceful and dangerous. Karn asks his cop friend, John, to investigate, but the truth matters less and less to Meena, whose bond to the boy keeps getting stronger until she begins actively fighting against anything that can take away her “son”.

For me, the biggest problem with this show is the screentime taken by Sita and the cult. If I hadn’t already watched Insomnia, things might’ve been different, but since I had, I never believed Nyctophobia was going to embrace the supernatural and really make the boy Arm’s reincarnation. So, because I was sure there was no way this was going to be anything but a scam, I kept wishing the show would just go ahead with the inevitable reveal and move on to other things. Not even the fact that Arm’s father, Pete, turns out to be helping Sita con his ex-wife compensates for all the time spent on this plotline. However, it did contribute to an unbearably tense sequence in which Karn’s daughter, Fai, who sneaked into Meena’s house to look for clues, tries to hide from Pete and Fake Arm and then narrowly escapes right after they find her. I really thought they were going to kill her!

At first, Nyctophobia plays with our expectations regarding Fake Arm, like when Karn takes him fishing and begins asking him things only Arm would know, and there’s a moment when it seems the boy could be about to stab him but instead hands Karn the knife. Or when he doesn’t kill the kitten and tells Fai it’s because he wants it to suffer more, which could be just an excuse not to do it. However, the show soon shatters our doubts about his nature when it’s implied that he killed a dog, and then pushes him over the point of no return when he kills Wan using a damaged phone charger because he realizes she wasn’t believing his lies. Yes, Fake Arm is a bad seed, and the show never gives him an out, save for the fact that he’s poor. But then again, Arm lived in a big house and was raised by a loving mother, and he also turned out to be a psychopath, so...

Because, yes, the real Arm liked killing animals, too, and also tormenting classmates, and this boy trying to take his place was his accomplice. In my review of the Sleepless Society: The Series, I wrote that Nyctophobia had my favourite twist of all miniseries, and this is it. Not that the real Arm was a psychopath, but that Meena knew what her son was like. I was genuinely surprised when, after a dog was found dead, she immediately said Arm was back. And then, when she’s only stopped from pulling the plug on Karn’s comatose wife because Fai shows up, it becomes clear that Meena herself is capable of some extreme behaviour, too. And don’t forget that the goal of all the rituals she’s paying for is to steal that body from its true owner and give it to Arm so she can have her son back. Yes, she’s grieving, but she goes too far, too quickly, without much hesitation.

While Meena’s refusal to listen to her friends is annoying, the most frustrating character in Nyctophobia is Karn. He sees the boy is lying, he even gets John to investigate him and they manage to find the evidence to prove it. He also knows Fake Arm killed Wan and suspects he put his wife in a coma. And yet, he still lets his infatuation with Meena cloud his judgement and ends up helping her escape with the boy. Karn’s relationship with his wife, Plernwan, doesn't make him look good either. She's pretty bad herself, but as I was watching, I felt that he crossed a few lines by being too aggressive even before she slapped Fai. Also, he’s been in love with Meena throughout their entire marriage, so I think Plernwan has a right to be suspicious of the time he's spending with her, even if she took it too far with her drinking.

Why didn’t Fai tell her father about Meena’s suspicious behaviour when she found her in her mother’s hospital room? I always hate it when characters don’t share information. Also, John wouldn’t have been out of place in a Murder, She Wrote episode, even if he eventually managed to uncover the truth about Fake Arm. Surely there were less annoying ways to delay revealing the truth? Oh, and the character who suffered from nyctophobia was Arm, but that doesn't influence the plot the way Iya’s insomnia did.

And now, the ending. The final twist, or even that Meena and Fake Arm didn't really die in the explosion, aren't impossible to guess. In fact, I’d been expecting that last reveal for a while. However, it was oh so fitting for Meena to find out then, after going through so much to keep that boy, that he had in fact been responsible for her beloved Arm’s death. We don’t get to see her full reaction because she has her eyes closed – which is why he confesses, because he thinks she’s asleep – but the tear makes it clear she heard it. Sometimes twists don’t have to be truly surprising to be satisfying.

By Wilcox