SLEEP (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2024

Here's a horror film that feels a bit too real for comfort, because writer/director Jason Yu isn't dealing with unstoppable masked killers, monsters, or demons. No, Sleep, the filmmaker's debut feature, garners its terror from two very human worries: not being able to control one's own body and not being able to trust the one person you're supposed to trust the most. It's chilling in a way that horror movies generally seem to have forgotten in recent years or even beyond that, because the story, characters, and even the possibility of supernatural elements being at play here are grounded in a sense of unflinching realism.

Yu's screenplay is especially crafty in how it evolves its premise. At first, it almost seems as if we're dealing with some more traditional horror setup, as Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is awoken in the middle of the night by her husband Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun). He's sitting up in bed, staring toward the door of the couple's bedroom. When she asks what's happening, he plainly says what might be the most ominous thing one could hear in the darkened, quiet stillness of one's own home: "Someone's inside."

Hyun-su falls back on his pillow, leaving it to Soo-jin, who's pregnant, to investigate whatever that strange, eerie statement could mean. Something is amiss in their apartment, since things are out of place, a window is open, and there's an occasional banging sound coming from somewhere in the space. The wife investigates but only finds the couple's little dog hiding and a slipper prevenslting the balcony door from closing. In the morning, Hyun-su rises and puts his feet on the floor, which lets us notice that the slipper belongs to him.

The short of the premise is that Hyun-su has started sleepwalking. He gets out of bed at late hours, unaware of what he's saying or doing in the moment and waking up with no memory of his late-night excursions. It seems harmless at first—just a small thing that the two can wonder and even laugh about, since Hyun-su is certain that his creepy declaration was just his mind recalling one of his lines from a bit part he has on a TV show. As the nights progress, the husband's somnambulistic behavior becomes more erratic and potentially or actually dangerous to himself and others.

A major reason the film is so effective is because it gives us a sense of this relationship as one that's perfectly ordinary and seemingly ideal. Hyun-su and Soo-jin are an enviable couple in many ways, because they love and support each other equally in the little things and the big ones.

He is an actor, working hard to make something of his career and starting to doubt if the effort is worthwhile. Before Hyun-su can say more than the thought that it might be time for him to quit, Soo-jin immediately stops him, reminds him that the success he wants can't come overnight, and encourages him to keep going, because she believes in him.

Meanwhile, Soo-jin works an office job she likes, often with late hours. Hyun-su is right downstairs with the car and without a complaint about the time to drive her home. The two greet each other quite sweetly, acknowledging each other's dream of what and who they want to be. They have a motto, which Hyun-su crafted on a wooden plaque that hangs in the apartment, for their marriage: "Together we can overcome anything." Honestly, it seems that way for the pair.

Well, it does, until Hyun-su's sleepwalking takes over everything about his life, her life, and whatever happiness has been in their relationship. He visits a doctor after Soo-jin finds her husband eating from the fridge—and eating straight from there, including raw meat and a whole egg. The doctor (played by Yoon Kyung-ho) diagnoses Hyun-su with REM sleep behavior disorder, which is a real condition that, for certain people, will almost certainly leap to or near the top of lists of things to be anxious about after watching this film.

The good news is that there are medications for Hyun-so to take and behavioral changes for him to make that could stop it. The bad news is that the regimen, which Hyun-su follows to the letter, takes time.

In the meantime, the sleepwalking continues, leading Hyun-su to act in explicitly hazardous ways, and Soo-jin gives birth, leading both of them to worry that he might unintentionally do something to the baby. The wife and new mother begins to worry to the point of paranoia.

That's where things go from bad to worse and where Yu's film transforms from a frightening domestic drama to an ingeniously devised piece of psychological horror, which is still and adamantly planted in reality. Sure, Soo-jin begins to suspect that a ghost might be involved, thanks to her interfering mother (played by Lee Kyung-jin) and the shaman (played by Kim Keum-soon) the mother invites to the apartment.

However, the wife is so desperate for answers and a solution, as well as so exhausted from keeping guard throughout the night, that none of that can be trusted. Even when the pieces seem to fall perfectly into place in Soo-jin's mind, there's a practical explanation for everything. The fact that Yu leaves open two different readings of the finale shows both his structural craft and his compassion for each of these characters.

It is a wickedly clever dynamic: the man who sleeps so soundly that he can hurt himself or others without stirring and the woman who is so terrified of what might happen to her or her baby that she cannot sleep. An overthinking mind, by the way, can be just as hazardous as an unthinking one—if not more so. The way Yu plays these distinct disorders off each other, assembling truly suspenseful sequences from matters as simple as a knocking at a door and—of all things—a slideshow presentation of basic math, is quite impressive.

Sleep creates a believable bond, portrayed so convincingly by Jung and Lee, and puts it through a ringer of mental-health-related horror. It's genuinely scary, simply because it is so real.

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