At this point, zombie movies feel like a tired, lumbering corpse. How many more spinoffs of The Walking Dead do we really need? Yet, give credit where credit is due. Sleep. Walk. Kill. tries to do something different. Writer/director Justin Miller injects some new life into an exhausted genre, while offering plenty of nods to the canon.

The horror/comedy stars Bill Reick as Edgar, a recently divorced slacker who despises his ex, Ady (Samantha Russell). She’s moving up in the world, into the burbs and into a bigger home. Edgar, meanwhile, has nothing meaningful going for him. Even his mom rags on him and calls him a failure. Ouch! However, his life suddenly finds purpose after a crisis grips the community. People fall asleep and wake up as monsters. He’s determined to make his way to Ady, despite their animosity towards each other.  Again, kudos to Miller for inventing a new concept for this genre. Sleepwalking monsters/zombies? We haven’t seen this before.

Yet, this is also a feature steeped in zombie pop culture. Edgar very much resembles Shaun (Simon Pegg) in Shaun of the Dead, and Edgar is a nice nod to that brilliant film’s director, Edgar Wright. There’s also a clever shoutout to Negan’s famed baseball bat. However, the way the story is told very much resembles Night of the Living Dead. Like Romero’s masterpiece, news of the crisis is shown in brief TV and radio broadcasts. The rest of the film focuses on survivors who have interpersonal drama and conflict, especially Edgar and Ady.

There’s also the obvious Pennsylvania connection. After all, Romero and special effects guru Tom Savini got their start in Pittsburgh and shot several films there, most notably Dawn of the Dead. Savini’s school and the Romero Foundation are both housed in PA. This film was shot in Yardley, a Philly suburb. It makes excellent use of the state’s southeastern setting. As a native of the state, I have to say that fall brings a unique kind of beauty. Our state has brilliant and vibrant foliage, and the film makes use of that to set the tone. There’s plenty of shots of blazing leaves and Colonial and Victorian homes dressed for Halloween. The Philly area truly has a special kind of autumn magic, and this feature showcases some of that.

However, there are some weak points here. There’s A LOT of talking and not a whole lot of killing. I understand this was low budget, but it needed more kills or even the sense that the sleepwalkers are a threat. There’s simply not enough of them. Even the tension among the survivors needed to be upped. Their arguments feel petty, especially considering the apocalyptic scenario. Perhaps more importantly, Edgar just isn’t that likeable. Though he does undergo some growth, he’s mostly obnoxious.

Miller has some real promise here as a director. Certainly, he knows his horror history. He also managed to take something tired and make it new again. That’s quite the task. Sleep. Walk. Kill. has it positives, but it needed more killing and less tiresome bickering.

6.5 Out of 10