The condition of sleeplessness has become something of an obsession for me lately, mainly because it's so goddamn hard to shake it. As the business of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness gets ever more redundant (and the apartment-bound kitties grow ever more rambunctious), the pure bliss of sleep becomes a frustrating argument between me and my pillow that often threatens to become violent. Michael Walker's scary thriller, Chasing Sleep, captures the frustration of walking the 4 a.m. tightrope, and raises the stakes by making its lead character, Professor Ed Saxon (Jeff Daniels, in unusually fine fettle), wrestle with the mysterious disappearance of his wife--a mystery that implicates him more and more as it unfolds.

This unfolding is more than a plot mechanism, it's a primary theme: the story unfolds, time unfolds, and Daniels' mind unfolds until his reality becomes largely inseparable from a dream state. Hours pass unaccounted for, a disembodied finger crawls through the house, a student's visit turns into a bloody embarrassment, phone calls become hostile, and cops start seeing the cracks in Saxon's story--and all he wants is a few hours of delta sleep. Murdered wife or no murdered wife, we can all relate to that.