Sleep
Newlywed expectant mother Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi, “Train to Busan”) is awakened when her husband, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun, "Parasite"), sits up abruptly in the middle of the night and says 'Someone’s inside.' He remains unresponsive, so Soo-jin gets up to check the apartment, finding Hyun-su’s slide propping a door open and Pepper, their Pomeranian, hiding in an odd place. Things continue to escalate and after Soo-jin has their child she becomes terrified of her husband’s increasingly odd behavior in his “Sleep.”
Laura's Review: B
Writer/director Jason Yu (assistant director, "Okja") makes his feature directorial debut with a K-Horror that is at once familiar in its themes yet gives us an eerie new threat in a loving spouse. At first, Hyun-su, an actor, believes his odd nocturnal statement was simply one of his lines from an upcoming television program, but the next time he sleep walks, Soo-jin finds him standing at the refrigerator eating raw meat, eggs and fish, before staring at their yapping dog, then hanging himself out a window, Soo-jin barely able to pull him back in. A sleep study suggests an REM disorder, but the doctor’s suggestions haven’t been helping and Soo-jin’s mom (Lee Kyung-Jin) wants to bring in a shaman. Meanwhile, the couple’s downstairs neighbor, Min-Jung (Kim Guk-Hee), has been complaining about noise.
Yu has broken his film into Chapters and the first ends with the horrific event we’ve been dreading all along while the second opens with Soo-jin giving birth, an innocent infant added to the home ratcheting up tension and Soo-jin’s fierce maternal instinct, especially after she reads online stories about sleepwalkers murdering family members. But the young wife and mother whose home is graced with a wooden plaque declaring ‘Together we can overcome everything’ also believes that despite the danger he poses, her husband himself is not at fault. When she runs into Min-Jung and her son walking the Pomeranian they got after admiring hers, Soo-jin suddenly realizes just how noisy the dog’s yapping is at night, a revelation which will begin to solve the mystery. Soo-jin goes on the warpath.
Yu, whose film recalls such predecessors as “The Grudge” and “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” has nonetheless come up with something unique for his first feature. He’s achieved an admiral tonal balance, black humor, like Hyun-su’s larval looking sleeping bag or the conclusions Soo-jin jumps to after finding her baby’s crib empty, never neutralizing real horrors. The production is also notable, cinematographer Tae-soo Kim using overhead shots to note the changes in sleeping configurations within Soo-jin and Hyun-su’s bedroom when he’s not following Soo-jin’s fearful nighttime explorations. Music by Hyukjin and Yong Jin Chang underlines the tension with percussion, taut strings and muted bells.
As Lee Sun-kyun oscillates between loving husband and creepy night walker, Jung Yu-mi navigates a path from fearful but supportive wife to hellacious warrior. Lee Kyung-Jin adds some comic relief and “Broker’s” Kim Keum-Soon makes a striking impression as Shaman Haegoong with her salt and pepper bob and bright red lips.
While Yu dots his i’s and crosses his t’s solving his mystery, he takes a bit too long wrapping things up when he gets to his Chapter 3 climax, draining the film of some of its momentum. Still, this is an assured, stylish and unsettling debut combining ideas old and new.
Robin's Review: B
Magnet Releasing opens "Sleep" everywhere you watch movies on 9/27/24.
