The Sleepover

The Sleepover is the second film I’ve seen from the Flunk creative universe. And frankly, my thoughts are near-identical to my thoughts about the previous one I saw, The Exchange. These are decent movies that I respect the focus and motivation of. But perhaps due to the fact that they originated from a webseries, these films are on the smaller scale. The Sleepover does well on this smaller scale but it can’t exactly hang with the big dogs of high budget and ambition larger scale movies.

The Sleepover is a continuation of the Flunk series focusing on pre-existing characters. Nerdy Tabby and bad girl Heidi were a couple for part of the series but have broken up before the events of this film. Of course, unaddressed issues and lingering feelings remain. Tabby’s friend, Saffron invites her to a sleepover. At the sleepover, we also meet Jaz and her out-of-town girlfriend, Astrid. And you’ll never guess who’s also invited to this sleepover. Oh, you did guess? Well, you’re correct. It’s Heidi. As the sleepover gets underway, Tabby and Heidi hash out old relationship issues, Tabby learns more information on the event that caused their breakup and the two deal with the still-existing chemistry between them. Meanwhile, Astrid and Jaz’s relationship also takes a journey from solid to shaky as the night goes on. Saffron is also there too, sometimes.

I largely consider The Sleepover being a continuation of a story to be a positive. It allows the characters to come into this small movie fully formed and with pre-existing backstory and relationship dynamics. The Sleepover does pretty well at walking the line of having the film continue stories from the webseries but also being accessible to viewers like me who haven’t seen Flunk. Maybe the film would hit harder if you also came into it with pre-existing care about these characters. But even without that, the film is good at its character work and smartly chose a limited time period and situation to set this feature length story.

The vibe of Flunk reminds me the most of the TV series, Skins. Both deal pretty frankly with teen sexuality and substance use. Though where Skins was pretty over the top and arguably exploitative, Flunk takes a more realistic route. Sex and substance use is a thing these girls engage with. It’s neither glamorized nor is it used for fear mongering against real teens doing such behaviours. This fairly realistic approach covers much of The Sleepover’s vibe. While I can’t exactly say I knew girls and situations like this in my own late teen years, all of it seems plausible. And the characters themselves do feel like real people instead of over-the-top exaggerations or shallow archetypes.

For all my compliments, The Sleepover has a ceiling of how good it can be for me. This is a small movie. It takes place in less than a day and the stakes are not exactly high. For eating dinner or in my case, doing a jigsaw puzzle, The Sleepover and the general Flunk universe would probably work. But small and semi-realistic as this universe is, it’s probably best enjoyed at about 60% of your attention as opposed to staring directly at it, not blinking and then writing a whole-ass review about it. For me at least, there is something disposable or replaceable about The Sleepover. While I enjoyed the film, I feel certain that there’s a decent handful of films I would’ve enjoyed exactly the same way and my life wouldn’t be any worse for having never seen The Sleepover.

I continue to admire the Flunk universe for its focus on realistic depictions of LGBTQ* youth with a focus on sapphic characters. I also continue not to be the main audience for this small, Australian webseries which has admittedly grown to being a whole franchise. If you like these sorts of smaller, semi-realistic narratives about young queers, give any story in the universe a shot. It’s good at what it does. But if that description doesn’t appeal to you, nothing in The Sleepover is going to change your mind or rock your world.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

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