Sleep

Sleep

잠

Writer & Director ~ Director

2023, South Korea

Stars ~ Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun

 

Affable husband and slightly annoying/hysterical wife seem pleasantly in
love and suited until his sleep disorder opens the doors to horror tropes.

 

It plunges head-first into horror set-up: Soo-JiSoo-ji (Jung Yu-mi) wakes to find her husband Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) perched ominously at the end of the bed, muttering “Someone’s inside.” It’s an almost by-the-book genre moment, but the fact that it comes first sets up all the potential for home invasion, possession, supernatural, haunting, and just plain old domestic disturbance that all those sub-genres are metaphors for.

 

A film like ‘Custody’ demonstrates how domestic situations can escalate to horror… even ‘A Room for Romeo Brass’ almost leans into this, the everdayness of violence. But films like ‘Sleep’, ‘The Coffee Table’ and ‘Swallow’ are based not an antagonist or the threat of an unleashed Id, but from the horror of accidents, circumstance and mental health issues. Although it keeps its options open, those nightmares of ‘Sleep’ are of the subconscious, unconscious and delusions taking over. Of how the medical issues of a loved one can totally throw a relationship into a tailspin of unforeseen consequences. And, of course, the anxieties of being a new parent with postpartum depression thrown in.

There’s a lot packed into a slim narrative, covering the fragility of the mind and the strength of love, which makes Yu’s debut deceptively simple but full-blooded. It’s a chamber piece of escalating misfortune. Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun give excellent performances that carry the narrative right through the black comedy and mysteries to earning the more full-on ending. There’s a dig at the visiting psychic trope that plays up both the ridiculous and bullying nature of the visit that most horrors don’t engage with, and a hilarious horror-exposition-through-slideshow. Although playing with genre, Yu never quite loses his grip and keeps its focus on the emotional core to the very end, concluding that it’s all a tragedy, more so for being no one’s fault.