A profoundly innocent movie, “Slumberland” provides a refreshing and childlike view on loss and the process of grieving. With an A-List cast: Flip (Jason Momoa), Nemo (Marlow Barkley) and Peter (Kyle Chandler), “Slumberland” takes its place as one of the few “not-terrible” Netflix movies. 

Netflix was able to do something that they are unable to accomplish with most of their original movies: they actually made it somewhat original. The story of a child dealing with loss and grief is a fairly well-told tale, however, the depiction of a child dealing with loss by escaping into a dream world is a refreshingly original perspective. 

Having the bereaved child, Nemo, escape into a dream world allowed the film to showcase all of the emotions she experiences in their purest forms. By using expansive CGI scenery, along with the purity of her emotions, the film carries a certain weight and conveys a very heartfelt experience to the viewer. 

Aside from those two things, however, this movie doesn’t really have much going for it. At its core, it is just so average. A good film should command one’s attention, it should compel one to give their undivided attention and just try to absorb the depths that it conveys. The movie, stripped down to its core, was fully focused on a little girl trying to find a way to connect with her father. Now, while this is endearing and very emotional at first, like most things, the movie follows the Law of Diminishing Returns. The constant focus of the movie on connecting with Nemo’s father slowly moves from endearing to annoying and from annoying to pathetic.

Let me clarify, Nemo trying to find her father wasn’t pathetic, but the lack of character development was. The problem with exploring the emotional depth of a child who lost her father is the fact that children don’t really have a large range of emotions nor have they developed the full capacity to comprehend the emotions that they feel. This truth led to what became a very tedious performance.

This is what I like to call a homework movie. It is a movie to put on in the background while doing any type of meaningless work. This is not a movie that will distract you, but if you were to cast your attention toward it, then it’s not something you’d regret, or remember. I won’t recommend this movie, but I won’t say that you shouldn’t watch it. It’s a movie that you come upon at 2:00 a.m. on a school night that will give you really weird dreams. It’s a “middle of the Netflix scroll” type of movie that you should’t scroll past, but you won’t miss out on much if you did.