The scary part is the lack of control. When you’re asleep, anything can happen. Your mind can dream up things wonderful and terrible. You can talk out loud. You can get up and move and walk with zero conscious control over your limbs. Recently, I fell asleep at my desk while working on a job report late into the night, and was amazed to find when I woke up that I had neatly written and complete and coherent sentence with the pen left dangling in my hand.
Sleep is great when it’s a purely restful time, but it can also be terrifying, and it’s the latter fear of not only what can happen when you’re asleep, but what your partner is capable of when they’re asleep, that Jason Yu tries to tap in to with his writing and directing feature debut, Sleep. But despite a promising set-up, Sleep struggles to balance terror with its frequently black comic tone.
Sleep follows a married couple, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-Kyun) and Soo-jin (Jung Yu-Mi). Soo-jin has a steady office job, and is preparing to give birth to the couple’s first child. Hyun-su is an actor pushing his way through a series of inconsequential bit parts on television, although success appears to be looming on the horizon: he just booked a big movie role, and he has some indie awards under his belt. Soon-jin is normally (understandably) perturbed by her husband’s snoring, but one night, Hyun-su sits straight up in bed and utters a simple yet distressing phrase: “Someone’s inside.”
What’s astonishing about Sleep is how Yu plays with his characters, reversing the primary source of fear— and the audience’s allegiances along with it— with ease. While the viewer is initially aligned with Soo-jin as she probes the cause of her husband’s severe and potentially dangerous somnambulism while protecting their child, her fear quickly flips to a paranoia that is just as, if not more, frightening. That these two people are committed to each other and their marriage, the film leaves little doubt: their upstairs neighbor complains to them about the noise of their love-making, and when Hyun-su— just as perplexed as to the cause of his actions— proposes that he move into a hotel for a while for the safety of his wife and newborn child, Soo-jin objects on the basis that this is something they need to go through together. But the characters are otherwise mostly vacuous entities. What is motivating Hyun-su, and what may be propelling his sleep disorder to increasingly disturbing heights: his job, an imbalance in his marriage and traditional gender roles (Soo-jin is not only clearly the bread-winner, but the one who takes charge in situations), the prospect of becoming a father for the first time? And what of Soo-jin? I would say that her maternal instinct kicking in after the birth is what really sets her off, but the child is such a non-factor in the story, quietly fading into the background almost as soon as it enters the world. The performances are solid: Sun-kyun, appearing posthumously following his passing at the end of 2023, confirms what a riveting screen presence he had, ably balancing humor and fear with a surprising dose of thoughtfulness for this sort of genre fare. Yu-Mi has arguably the more interesting role as she tackles Soo-jin’s mounting ticks. There are beguiling glances at her controlling or compulsive behavior, like her irritated reaction to her annoyingly pleasant neighbor (a scene-stealing Kim Gook-hee) and the neighbor’s equally annoying son adopting a Pomeranian almost exactly like her dog, Pepper, or the neat and neutral tones of their clean apartment, or a howl-inducing scene involving a Power Point presentation in the film’s climax. But those traits ultimately don’t inform the story, which unhelpfully veers toward a routine possession storyline.
Sleep is elegantly designed and directed. For a film that is primarily set inside an apartment, Yu navigates the interior with precision. Sleep is a lean 94 minutes, but Yu maintains a steady pace while allowing scenes to breathe for long enough for moments of terror to build in the most mundane environments (even the predictable fridge jump scare is pulled off with skill). But horror juxtaposed with humor doesn’t work when a story has so little to say about its characters, their relationships, or any sort of broader themes. Sleep slides by on its killer premise and stylish design making it passable entertainment, but it dozes on the thematic elements required to push it to the dazzling heights suggested by Yu’s mentor and previous collaborator, Bong Joon Ho, that it’s “the most unique horror film and smartest debut film I’ve seen in 10 years.”
Sleep opens in select theaters and on demand on September 27. Runtime: 94 minutes.
Katie at the Movies 
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