Before I Go to Sleep flopped in 2014, and Kidman and Firth's thriller is now free on YouTube

Here’s a turn-up: that Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth thriller you probably blinked and missed back in the mid-2010s is making an unexpected comeback – and this time, you don’t have to pay a penny to see it. I’m talking about Before I Go to Sleep, the twisty little number based on S.J. Watson’s bestseller, which honestly seemed to fall down a crack on release. Well, now it’s popped up for free on YouTube. That is, if you’re willing to put up with a few ads thrown in for good measure.

Before I Go to Sleep, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, can now be streamed free on YouTube’s Shout! Studio channel.

Amnesia, Kidman, Suspicious Husbands

So, what’s the deal with this one? Released in 2014, Before I Go to Sleep follows Kidman’s character, Christine Lucas, who wakes up every morning with zero recollection of her life – genuine blank slate stuff, thanks to a particularly nasty incident years earlier. Her husband Ben, played by Firth, dutifully reminds her daily who she is and what apparently happened, which isn’t at all suspicious (never trust a husband in a mystery thriller, if you ask me).

The plot thickens when Dr. Nasch (that’s Mark Strong with his usual gravitas) gets in touch behind Ben’s back, tipping Christine off to a camera she’s been using to leave herself video diaries. It’s all very Memento-but-with-posh-accents as she tries to piece together what’s real, what’s invented, and whether the bloke she wakes up next to every morning is actually on her side. As the videos mount up, Christine—not surprisingly—starts to suspect all’s not as it seems, both with Ben and her own memories of the mysterious assault that kicked this all off.

Box Office Blues & Lukewarm Reception

If you’re wondering why you never heard much about the film at the time, the answer is: it didn’t exactly set tills ringing. With a $22 million budget, it scraped together about $17.7 million globally. That tells the story, really—a solid cast, but it slipped below the radar and never got much love from critics. Rotten Tomatoes currently plants it at a not-so-proud 37% on the Tomatometer (audiences were only slightly kinder, inching it up to 40%).

• Nicole Kidman as Christine Lucas: memory wiped every single morning
• Colin Firth as Ben: the possibly dodgy husband
• Mark Strong as Dr. Nasch: hiding things from Ben, apparently for Christine’s good
• Also turns from Anne-Marie Duff, Adam Levy, Ben Crompton, Dean-Charles Chapman

If you fancy checking out a mystery that never quite got its due, Before I Go to Sleep is now quietly available to stream on the Shout! Studio YouTube channel – no fee required, just those inevitable ads.