JP Nunez
Sleep has been on my radar for quite a while. I first got wind of it in the spring when a PR company sent me a list of their upcoming films for the next several months, and it sounded like it would be right up my alley. I’ve been keeping an eye out for this movie ever since, so when I was offered a screener, I jumped at the opportunity. I couldn’t wait to check it out, and now that I finally have, I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed.
Sleep was written and directed by Jason Yu, and it stars Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Yu-mi. In the film, Hyun-su and Soo-jin are newlyweds who seem to be living the dream. They clearly love each other, and they have a baby on the way, so it looks like nothing can shatter their domestic bliss. But not long after we first meet them, Soo-jin notices her husband exhibiting some very strange behavior in his sleep.
He utters unsettling phrases, he sleepwalks, and there’s even one night when he scratches his face up pretty badly. The couple are understandably quite concerned, so they go see a doctor. Hyun-su gets diagnosed with a sleeping disorder, but medical treatment doesn’t help the situation. The poor guy continues his bizarre nighttime antics, forcing him and his wife to consider other, more metaphysical possibilities. Is this really just a garden-variety sleep disorder, or is Hyun-su being haunted by a malevolent spirit?
I don’t know about you, but I love movies that skirt the line between the psychological and the supernatural, and Sleep executes that age-old conundrum just about perfectly. For starters, this film features excellent acting all around, so you’ll totally believe that these are real people going through a terrifying ordeal. But as usual, there’s one performance in particular that really hooks you and draws you in.
Jung Yu-mi plays Soo-jin, and she’s the heart and soul of this movie. She’s completely convincing as the stressed-out wife trying to do everything she can to help her husband get better, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Jung Yu-mi doesn’t just make you buy into her character. She makes Soo-jin’s pain and anxiety almost tangible, so you can’t help but feel a bit of it yourself. Then, in the final 25-30 minutes or so, she gets even better. Unfortunately, I can’t go into any specifics without spoiling the bonkers third act, but I can say that this might even be a contender for the best horror performance of the year come December.
On top of those excellent characters, Sleep also features one hell of a horror mystery. Like I said upfront, this movie lives on the boundary between psychological and supernatural horror, and it plays up that ambiguity in incredibly clever ways. See, unlike, say, The Exorcist, the lead characters here don’t exhaust all their medical options first and then seek spiritual help as a last resort.
Instead, they start thinking about evil spirits while Hyun-su is still undergoing his medical treatment, so when the pills prove ineffective, it’s not clear what the couple’s next step should be. Should they try a different kind of medicine, or should they opt for an exorcism? And as the story progresses, that uncertainty remains front and center the entire time.
Everything that happens to Hyun-su can be explained medically, but it can also fit perfectly into a more spiritual scheme. You simply don’t know what’s really going on, and as Sleep reaches its big finale, that ambiguity explodes in one of the smartest ways I’ve seen in years.
Next, we have to talk about the scares in this film. Much like the mystery, Hyun-su’s nighttime bouts of insanity also exploit the power of uncertainty, but in a different way. It’s not so much that you’re uncertain of why he’s doing these things as it is that you simply have no idea what he’s going to do and that unpredictability makes for some genuinely nerve-wracking moments.
To take just one example, there’s a scene where Soo-jin is in the bathroom at night, and she starts to hear some concerning noises right outside her door. She eventually walks out and sees what her husband is doing, but before she does, the sound alone makes the tension nearly unbearable. Hyun-su could be doing almost anything out there, and that thought is downright terrifying.
Last but not least, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a few words about how Sleep ends. I said before that the third act is bonkers, and to be frank, I think it’s going to be somewhat divisive. The movie changes gears pretty drastically, and I suspect that change is going to be quite jarring and off-putting for a lot of viewers.
It’s not that the action gets crazy. Rather, it’s the ideas in this part of the film that are completely off the wall. They take the psychological/supernatural dilemma to a whole new level, and while they make for some undeniably clever storytelling, this ending almost feels like it belongs in a different film.
It might even ruin the experience for some people, but in my book, it was a ton of fun. I had a total blast with the final 25-30 minutes of Sleep, so when the credits began to roll, I had a big smile on my face. This is the second-smartest horror movie of the year (behind Strange Darling), and when you combine that ingenuity with awesome characters and effective scares, you get nothing short of cinematic gold.
Sleep is set to hit theaters and VOD on September 27.
