With Kickstarter, YouTubers and TikTokers trying to take their popularity and product to a wider, offline audience, the results have been uneven to disastrous with film studios snatching up the best until now. Thanks to “Two Sleepy People” (2025), we finally have a real movie with the artistic chops to walk in the footsteps of the independent films of the Nineties and the mumblecore films of the early twenty first century while featuring a unique story, polished production values and solid acting. On October 19th, the first day at “Some Sunny Day Advertising Agency” after a merger, two strangers, Syd (Baron Ryan, director and cowriter) and Lucy (Caroline Grossman, cowriter) seem familiar to each other, but do not linger on the feeling until the next day. In the dream world, they are married to each other and have richer, fuller lives than they do when they are awake. How will they find a way to live the dream? Ryan and Grossman make a film that tackles some hard problems without pulling punches or brushing aside the ethics of the sci-fi premise.
Syd is nebbish and proud of his work, but he has no fight in him. Though doing well for himself, Syd feels that the world is a lackluster, mediocre place. He is married to Donna (Sarah J. Bartholomew), a high strung, day drinker who weaponizes therapy talk. To keep the peace, he does whatever she wants. He has artistic ambitions, which she resents. The authentic connection is not there anymore. In his dreams, he can be himself and enjoy the company of his oneiric wife, but when he realizes that he works with her, he is alarmed and not looking for a work wife or an affair. Fun fact: there is a theory that you have seen everyone who appears in your dreams because we cannot create faces. If “Two Sleepy People” is brilliant, it is for leaning into the complicated gray areas of the story without making their characters irredeemable.
Lucy is a more complex figure. Until she enters the liminal space of their shared dream world, it is unclear what her issues are other than the general malaise of working in an office and the chasm between being authentic and acceptable. Even in that safe space, her issues remain vague to refrain from being exploitive. Ryan and Grossman never feel as if they are acting, have great chemistry and refuse to play it safe, especially in the liminal space which looks like a black box theater. Their onscreen partnership never feels like a romcom though the marketing definitely spins that angle hard so though it shares similar themes to “The Baltimorons” (2025), it finds a way to do it as individuals without aiming to become a couple or extend their time together. Instead, their partnership is about intimacy and acceptance that they do not have in the real world, which stops them from getting to the next level in their life. Instead of therapy, they have each other.
Instead of flashbacks, the past unfolds in the dream world for them to watch and interact with pivotal events that shaped their adult choices and public person. Eventually as they confront their issues and process their emotions, they have the freedom to be carefree and childlike in a way that they could not before the dream world appeared as a space to explore and experiment. If you read this and are too cool for acting exercises or role playing in therapy, then “Two Sleepy People” is not for you, but 2025 had a ton of appealing movies that channel raw emotions into the theater kid world such as “Griffin in Summer” (2024) and “Eternity” (2025). “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey” (2025) worked best when it took that approach, but its whimsy felt forced. Here it feels like genuine joy.
“Two Sleepy People” shines because it refuses to villainize Donna though she is objectively unlikable, which is impressive because as the couple backstory unfolds, Syd superficially fits a certain kind of villain husband archetype. It is rare to see a film execute such a high wire act. It may be the most emotionally manipulative section of the film, but Bartholomew pulls it off. When Ryan puts on his director’s hat, as the film approaches the denouement, it is harder to distinguish between the liminal space and the real world. Thanks to co-cinematographers JT Clemente and Ethan Tran, who also edits, the real world in homes is usually bright and white, but at the office, the tone is clinical and blue. The liminal space is warmer and brown. When Syd starts cooking, the perspective shifts with the camera peering into the couple’s house from the outside, and the exterior looks black except where the glass exposes a portion of their home’s interior thus making them seem as if they are at the borders of the black box liminal space on the verge of confronting their marital problems. An exterior office building shot is similar as Lucy stops performing and presents her real self at work. The pitch-black darkness is not a void, but an opportunity. All the world is a (black box) stage, but the only part that you should play is yourself.
Is the story perfect? For all intents and purposes, yes. The marketing missed an opportunity to create more mystery and suspense for the audience because the coeditors Tran and JT Clemente made room for ambiguity, which is also in the script, that the oneiric space is actually the future and Donna and Syd split years before. From the moment that Syd and Lucy meet in the office, the editors alternate quickly between the real world and the warm space. Grossman and Ryan nail how quotidian life tries and fails to acknowledge the spirit of people and create room for authenticity, but it fails because everyone has a bag of rocks and fails to unpack them. The story ends on Christmas so there is the added bonus of a Christmas miracle, a rebirth and being their own hope.
It is better to leave audiences wanting more than wishing that the filmmakers would wrap it up, so the following is just a note, not a criticism. The supporting actors seemed promising, and there was room to explore how the premise of melatonin gummies affected everyone. Craig (Jonathan Flanders), the intense and instinctual jerk manager, and his interactions with the client (Dax Flame) were hilarious, and Josh (Josh Czuba) nicely set up the idea of wasting life while sleeping.
The production makes images and issues literal. In one awkward scene with Syd and Donna, after “Two Sleepy People” reveals Donna’s origin story, there is a framed poster with the word “Stay” written in cursive. Their home has towers of unopened boxes to symbolize the baggage that they refuse to unpack and live awkwardly amidst.
“Two Sleepy People” is the rare movie that depicts how it is possible to have a decent life with no visible problems, and it still is not enough without sounding whiny. It is a privileged story, especially now, but a universally relatable feeling to want to be one cohesive person who is always fully present. Settling can be soul killing though understandable. It is a human right, not a privilege to have an authentic, examined life. Not bad for twelve days of writing and ninety days of filming.
