Sleep review – Jason Yu has the juice

At the tail end of 2023, the untime­ly death of South Kore­an star Lee Sun-kyun shocked the world. Best known as one of the stars of Bong Joon Ho’s Par­a­site, Lee had been one of his generation’s most acclaimed actors, star­ring in local main­stream and art­house films. Among the lat­ter were sev­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tions with direc­tor Hong Sang-soo, many of which paired him with actor Jung Yu-mi (Oki’s Movie, Our Sun­hi). In what end­ed up being Lee’s final film to pre­mière while he was still alive, the two stars are reunit­ed for a spooky tale that show­cas­es both their respec­tive talents.

Sleep is the elec­tric debut of writer-direc­tor Jason Yu. Lee plays Hyun-su, a job­bing actor stuck with two-line roles, who lives in an apart­ment with his preg­nant wife, Soo-jin (Jung), who has an office job. Theirs is a sweet rela­tion­ship. They greet and hype up each oth­er as ​“Mr. Oscar Win­ner” and ​“Ms. Exec­u­tive”. Their framed wed­ding pho­to fea­tures them with their Pomeran­ian, Pep­per, wear­ing a bowtie. A plaque say­ing ​‘Togeth­er We Can Over­come Any­thing’ dec­o­rates their liv­ing room. That’ll soon be put to the test.

One night, Hyun-su says the words, ​“Someone’s inside,” in his sleep. Over the next few nights, he not only starts walk­ing but also self-harm­ing while asleep. Tests reveal that Hyun-su has a sleep behav­iour dis­or­der, mean­ing that lifestyle adjust­ments must be made as the cou­ple wait for his med­ica­tion to start working.

Sleep’s nar­ra­tive is divid­ed into three chap­ters. Giv­en that Soo-jin’s preg­nan­cy is very far along, it’s no spoil­er to say that the sec­ond chap­ter tracks how the birth of their child only wors­ens anx­i­eties con­cern­ing Hyun-su’s mys­te­ri­ous con­di­tion. This stretch is also where Sleep begins flirt­ing with a spe­cif­ic hor­ror sub­genre, though addi­tion­al unease comes via Soo-jin’s post­na­tal depres­sion. As her own dreams com­pound the fear that Hyun-su will unwit­ting­ly harm their new­born daugh­ter dur­ing an episode, para­noid Soo-jin is drawn to super­nat­ur­al solu­tions over the sci­en­tif­ic ones that aren’t pro­duc­ing a cure.

This is one of those hor­ror films where the explo­ration of gen­uine­ly unset­tling ideas is skil­ful­ly done through­out, even if spe­cif­ic scare sequences nev­er quite pro­voke jolts as clear­ly intend­ed. Unlike Jang Jae-hyun’s excel­lent Exhuma from this year (which also fea­tures pos­ses­sion), Sleep is lack­ing in real­ly ghast­ly images that sear onto the brain. That’s alright, though, when the over­all film is so con­sis­tent­ly enter­tain­ing, with such con­fi­dent direc­tion and pro­tag­o­nists so endearing.

Despite sleepi­ness being part of its premise, the pac­ing of Yu’s film is propul­sive, and the deft detours into dark com­e­dy – espe­cial­ly a reveal involv­ing Pow­er­Point slides – are a high­light. But it’s Jung and Lee’s work that lingers the most, their thor­ough­ly charm­ing, live­ly per­for­mances enhanc­ing the tragedy and dread of some­thing awful hap­pen­ing to them. They at least luck out with one of the qui­eter new­borns in hor­ror his­to­ry, though the baby’s rel­a­tive lack of cry­ing is unnerv­ing in its own way.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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