Parents' Guide to

Insomnia

By Nell Minow, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Well-made but grisly thriller is not for kids.

Movie R 2002 118 minutes
Insomnia Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

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age 14+

Based on 6 parent reviews

Greg H.
Greg H. Adult
May 13, 2023
age 13+
Sam M.
Sam M. Parent of 0-year-old
November 19, 2017
age 14+

Underrated Nolan Film

A grim story of guilt, self justification and being pushed over the edge. One of Robin Williams best serious roles. The character beats hit hard, memorable moments of intimate psychological conflict between characters, and the two leads foil eachother perfectly as we learn of thier human and base sides. It offerd much food for thought. Very little gruesome details for a murder mystery. The only examples are very brief flashes of a small blood spurt from a gunshot to a characters chest and a dead dog used as a dummy for a bullet framing (we see some bloody fur as hand presumably goes into the fresh wound to dig bullet out). Theres also a disturbing discription of how a young boy was hanged. Very brief unfocused sight of a cadavers breast. 25 or so f words.
See all 6 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Detective Dormer (Al Pacino) and his partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), are LA cops on special assignment to investigate the brutal murder of a teen-age girl in tiny Nightmute, Alaska. Dormer, brought in for his expertise, meets eager young Nightmute detective Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) who did a case study on one of the crimes he solved when she was in school. But Dormer and Eckhart may have been sent to Alaska to keep them out of the way of an Internal Affairs investigation. They are investigators and subjects of investigation at the same time. Dormer struggles being in Alaska looks at a time of year when it is light all night long. Images of light and darkness haunt him as he tries to escape the light so he can get some sleep and as he is forced to confront a darkness within himself that draws him both to killers and their eradication. It turns out that he and the killer will have a connection that, like the midnight sun, will keep him awake.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (6):
Kids say (9):

Like his previous film Memento, director Christopher Nolan's thoughtful thriller has many dualities and counterpoints and an impaired main character. We cannot always trust what we see through Dormer's eyes, nor can Dormer. Nolan uses everything -- the huge frozen vistas, the disorientation of perpetual sunlight, the fog that surrounds their first glimpse of the killer, the names (Dormer is "to sleep" in French, Ellie Burr is a detective whose dedication is a constant irritant). Dormer's lack of sleep both deconstructs and constructs him. He enters a surreal state in which he is both more and less able to rely on his judgment.

Pacino, Swank, Donovan, and Maura Tierney as a sympathetic hotel proprietor are all first-rate. The movie's weakest point is Robin Williams in the under-written role of the killer.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the moral compromises Dormer makes and the ways in which people have to balance the ends and the means. What will Ellie do next? Why? Why is the town named "Nightmute?" What do you think about the girl who was killed?

Movie Details

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