As Sleep (2023) opens, we can – appropriately enough – hear someone gently snoring: a couple is in bed. And yet, you get the distinct impression that restful sleep isn’t going to feature heavily here, or even at all beyond this point. The film almost instantly starts to toy with the hazy delineations between sleep, dreaming and night terror, as soon as husband Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun) sits up in bed and announces, ‘there’s someone inside’. His wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is already restless, and heavily pregnant: she finds herself patrolling the rooms of their apartment, looking for a potential outsider. (You’ll notice Hyun-su goes straight back to sleep; troubled sleep or otherwise, he’s rather good at dropping off.)
Things are more normal by day; you could go so far as to say that they seem idyllic, right down to the motivational quote hanging on the wall which, oh god, they apparently have in Korea, too. Husband and wife are preparing for the arrival of their first child; Hyun-su is in work as an actor, or an aspiring actor at least. At night is when these two properly catch up, as their day-to-day lives are lived rather separately, what with work and other commitments. But likewise, night-time is when a certain level of oddness is starting to creep in. This primarily affects Hyun-su, who begins to rake at his skin unknowingly, to sleepwalk, and to raid the fridge. He’s unrecognisable – and unreachable – when in this state. Then the baby arrives, and exacerbates these issues.
The de rigeur search for a cause for the sleepwalking ensues: one explanation is purely physical, with a trip to a sleep specialist and a prescription for medication; the other is more spiritual, and derives almost entirely from Soo-jin’s concerned mother, who has a retinue of mantras and shamans at her disposal. However, at least initially, both of these approaches garner limited success, and Soo-jin – with a new baby to care for – is growing increasingly alarmed.
One of Sleep‘s key issues is with its characters, which may derive from the fact that this is a first feature by director and writer Jason Yu: in encompassing a number of potential plotlines, the film skips over very detailed characterisation along the way, which leaves Soo-jin – at least initially – with rather a thin role as a chiding helpmeet. South Korea has a plummeting birth rate; there are plenty of damn solid reasons behind this, but you can’t help wondering if cultural representations of pregnancy like this one have something to do with it. Alright, that’s glib, but Soo-jin is needy, peevish, and for a large share of the film, entirely secondary to the foibles of her husband. This skittish dedication is often played for laughs – the film has a somewhat odd balance of humour to horror – but nonetheless she often comes across as highly-wrought – as does her mother, who pops up only as a conduit for the film’s more supernatural content, and as a babysitter. That all being said, the film does its best work when it sets itself up as a proper guessing game, making the audience guess at how much human neuroses are to blame for what’s unfolding here. The film’s middle act, where it turns the screws on a new mother in a very uncertain situation, demanding increasingly strained, sober maturity from her, is its best.
Another key strength is in how Sleep explores ideas around home, and what can happen to this safe space when something, even something quite simple, is disrupted. So someone starts to sleepwalk; even if that’s all they do, it destroys the restful sleep of other people in the home, and that can be enough to render home a very unpleasant place to be. Of course, the film does more than that, turning this light and airy apartment into a contested, uncertain environment. Bars and locks are fitted to keep someone in, rather than keep someone out, but then, as that individual escalates their strange behaviour, you might want them out. Soo-jin’s assertion that her husband shouldn’t move out, even temporarily, as he quite sensibly suggests, seems ludicrous given her rising terror for herself and the baby. But her ingrained ideas about marriage, family and functionality keep her in harm’s way; this very earthly, very recognisable content is strong, and more engaging than the exposition we finally get (which necessitates a PowerPoint to explain!)
Once we get into the supernatural plot points, Sleep gives us a ream of recognisable elements, with sadly guessable twists and turns. It makes for a weaker, more formulaic close to proceedings. As a film, overall, it’s perhaps a little busy with different strands of storytelling and different generic elements, although it happily doesn’t indulge itself in an inflated runtime, even though it is – as so many films have been before it – chaptered, for little explicable point. There are also high production values here, and clear evidence of ambition from Yu.
Sleep (2023) screened at the recent Raindance Film Festival.