Apnea, insomnia, sleep hygiene, sleep aids, sleep tricks: It’s all science but feels like sorcery. Even the most rational person can begin to suspect, three weeks into sleepwalking spells or 3 a.m. wakefulness, that some curse has been placed upon them, and the only cure is some mystical spell. It’s the stuff of horror, and the director Jason Yu harnesses it deftly for his debut feature, “Sleep,” a neatly constructed thriller about the sort of insanity that slumber issues can visit on even the most harmonious household.
The household here is made up of the newlyweds Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) and Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi), who is heavily pregnant. They live in a modest apartment with Pepper, their fluffy and beady-eyed white Pomeranian. On their living room wall hangs a plaque proclaiming a cheerfully optimistic notion: “Together we can overcome anything.” This sentiment, we understand, is about to face a great challenge.
First it’s Hyun-su’s sleep disturbances. He scratches his face bloody in the night — a problem, since he’s an actor who is in the middle of shooting a minor part in a TV show. He sleepwalks, and sleep-eats. When Soo-jin observes him in the night, she realizes he is gorging himself on weird and gross food — raw meat and eggs — and she starts to worry, with mounting fright, for Pepper’s safety. Hyun-su seems to not be himself at night. What is he capable of?
The couple consult a doctor and take precautionary measures, but Hyun-su’s sleep activities are taking their toll on Soo-jin, who sleeps less and less, especially once the baby arrives. He offers to stay in a hotel for a while; she is convinced they need to be together: As the plaque says, they can only overcome anything together. At the same time, Soo-jin’s superstitious mother tries to talk them into less orthodox cures, and Soo-jin, red-eyed and nearly delirious from constant, wakeful vigilance starts to wonder if her mother has a point.
Yu’s direction is confident, and he manages to convey how a little apartment can transform from domestic comfort by day to claustrophobic agony by night. His restraint throughout keeps us guessing. We really don’t know what’s plaguing Hyun-su. Is it nerves, or a neurological disorder, or some dark and shadowy force? Soo-jin doesn’t know either, and it scares her on several levels. But when Soo-jin’s state of mind deteriorates, Hyun-su becomes just as worried about his wife, who, after all, just gave birth, and wouldn’t be sleeping well no matter what.
This all relies on Lee and Jung’s performances, first as a couple who are cozy in love and then, more and more, as people who aren’t sure they have ever really known the person they sleep next to at night. Jung is particularly captivating as she descends toward something that seems, at least to her, like utter madness, an inability to discern reality any longer, or even know what “reality” might mean.
Insomnia and sleep disorders have furnished fruitful material for scores of horror movies and bleary-eyed thrillers, movies that are all the more scary because they can bleed very easily into our own dreams. But “Sleep” feels a little different than “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Insidious,” or even “Insomnia.”
If it wasn’t for the horror-thriller trappings — music, lighting, a few great jump scares — “Sleep” would be an effective chamber drama about navigating the trials of early marriage and new parenthood. How shall we solve this problem? Which conflicts will arise, to our shock and dismay? What do we do with this baby? How do we keep it alive? And why is your deranged mother always here? They’re primal questions, and, when you get right down to it, pretty scary ones.
That there’s a strain of cheeky humor threaded throughout “Sleep” — a knowing wink that says, we’ve all been here before, right? — keeps it from getting ponderous or lugubrious or too self-important. Everybody can’t sleep sometimes. Everybody encounters domestic drama. Everyone sometimes wonders if they’re losing their grip on reality. And everyone, eventually, has to sleep somehow.
The post ‘Sleep’ Review: Bumps in the Night appeared first on New York Times.
