Sleep (2023) Review

“Sleep” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Jason Yu
Cast: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Keum-Soon, Kim Guk-Hee, Lee Kyung-Jin, Yoon Kyung-Ho, Lee Dong-Chan, Park Hyun-Jeong, Hong Ha-Naim
Running Time: 94 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The best horror movies plug into the kind of primeval fear that everyone can relate to, and in that regard its hard to think of a more commonly binding part of being human than the need to sleep. For most of us we’re lucky enough to take sleeping safely for granted, drifting off and waking up in the morning to start a new day, but in director Jason Yu’s aptly titled debut Sleep, it’s the time when we’re at our most vulnerable when terror is most likely to find its way in.

Of course the concept of using sleep in a horror movie is far from new, with the entire Nightmare on Elm Street franchise based on a killer being able to enter victim’s dreams, however Sleep takes a different approach to the same angle, focusing on a happily married couple who are expecting their first child. Played by Jung Yu-mi (Train to Busan, My Dear Desperado) and Lee Sun-kyun (Parasite, Kingmaker), the pairs onscreen chemistry clearly benefits from the time they spent working together with indie director Hong Sang-soo on 2013’s Our Sunhi and 2010’s Oki’s Movie. As a fan of Korean cinema it’s a pleasure to see them reunited for the first time in 10 years, with the unfortunate elephant in the room being that Sleep would be Sun-kyun’s final movie before his suicide in December of the same year (while Project Silence has yet to be shown in Korea, it did already premier at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival).

A sense of dread is instilled from the opening scene, as Yu-mi wakes up in the middle of the night to find Sun-kyun sat at the end of the bed, uttering the words “Someone’s inside” before collapsing back into a deep sleep again. In the light of a new day everything seems explainable, as Sun-kyun’s struggling actor reveals it was a line from the script he’s been rehearsing, and the interaction is quickly forgotten about as they busy themselves with their day-to-day lives. However as the nights pass his behaviour becomes increasingly out-of-character, sleep walking in a trance and showing signs of inflicting self-harm, imbuing a gradually rising sense of fear both in Yu-mi and the audience as a loving husband becomes someone unrecognisable once sleep sets in.

As a first-time director Jason Yu has crafted a remarkably assured debut with Sleep, clearly having taken some notes from working with the likes of Bong Joon-ho on Okja and Jang Cheo-soo on Secretly and Greatly, both productions on which he was part of the directing department. There’s an ominous tone throughout, and Yu creates an unsettling contrast by allowing us to see Yu-mi and Sun-kyun’s lives during the day, when they’re clearly in love and looking forward to becoming parents, which are played off against the increasingly disturbing events that play out by night. While a traditional horror movie would likely go the route of using the plot device to have them turn against each other, part of what makes their characters so relatable is that they do just the opposite, instead looking for ways they can support each other and find a solution to the issue.

Desperate to find a fix for these events he has no recollection of happening, and with the added pressure of a new-born baby, the pair decide to visit a sleep specialist who diagnoses Sun-kyun with a stress related sleep disorder, and gives him a course of medication to address it. But after things don’t improve even after the baby is born, Yu-min’s superstitious mother is convinced the problem could be more sinister, and insists they enlist a shaman to check Sun-kyun for the presence of any evil spirits. The conflict of science versus spiritual is a familiar one in Korean cinema dating back to the likes of 1981’s Suddenly in the Dark, and like there here the spiritual approach is one that’s largely discredited as being out of touch with the times and unreliable. However the more disturbing Sun-kyun’s behaviour while sleeping becomes, the more Yu-min begins to consider if there could be something supernatural at play.

In many ways Sleep can almost be seen as a chamber piece, for the most part playing out within the walls of the couple’s apartment, and heavily centered around Yu-mi and Sun-kyun with the minimal supporting cast being on the peripheral. The space in the apartment is smartly utilised, big enough so that the setting doesn’t become repetitive, but small enough to start feeling claustrophobic once the tension starts to really ratchet up. The structure firmly places Yu-mi as the protagonist of the piece, as only her and the audience are witness to Sun-kyun’s night-time behaviour, and director Yu shows himself to be equally talented as a scriptwriter. The gradually escalating events eventually come to a point that, desperate to protect their baby, when Yu-mi does start questioning what could be going on with Sun-kyun, it feels like it makes complete sense.

Entries in the Korean horror genre in the 21^st century generally miss the mark more than they hit it, with the traditional summer scheduling slots usually offering up an underwhelming mix of found footage flicks or ghost tales, with titles like A Tale of Two Sisters and The Wailing being exceptions to the rule. Korean audience’s leanings towards melodramatic endings have also ruined many a potentially solid horror, with the likes of The Anchor and The 8th Night being derailed in their final reels by a sudden turn into unwarranted histrionics, which never feels like it translates effectively beyond Korean shores. I bring up these points because Sleep deserves credit for not falling into either category, largely thanks to Yu keeping things within a tight 95-minute runtime split into 3 chapters, ensuring the narrative doesn’t outstay its welcome.

In fact if anything the overall tone of Yu’s debut feels closer to Korea’s horror output in the 90’s, particularly titles like 1997’s The Hole, when the focus was on delivering 90 minutes of tension without the need to incorporate any other themes or genres on top of it. This is on display no more so than in the final reel, when Yu fully commits to the outlandishness of the concept and allows himself to have fun with it. What other horror movie in recent history, or ever for that matter, would be audacious enough to craft a finale that involves extensive use of both a PowerPoint presentation and a power drill!? Sleep is that movie, and it’s to Yu’s credit that he actually makes it work, allowing for things to get unhinged just enough to keep things credible, and offer a fitting conclusion that’s open to interpretation.

As a slow burner into the depths of madness as lack of sleep, anxiety, and post-partum depression all rear their heads in different forms, Yu does a stellar job of putting Yu-min and Sun-kyun through the wringer, and the way they fully commit to their characters is admirable. While Sleep may not rely on jump scares for its horror label, Yu does a stellar job of creating a sense of dread at what horrors may lay around the corner (a scene involving a large pot of boiling water is a highlight), which in many ways is even more effective.

As a debut Sleep clearly marks director Jason Yu as a talent to look out for. Taking a tired and well-trodden genre, the decision to eschew things like special effects and emotional bombast, swapping them for an exercise in building tension and dread through confined spaces and a fear of the unknown, is undoubtably a winning one. Whether you choose to believe the scientific or the spiritual will depend on your take on the final moments, however either way it’s a satisfying close to a genre that rarely gets sole billing without having other genres mixed in to dilute it. Sadly we won’t get to see Lee Sun-kyun on our screens anymore, but as a final performance, Sleep is a worthy one.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 8/10