By Variety | Created at 2024-09-26 21:15:18 | Updated at 2024-09-30 09:36:24
3 days ago
Hot on the heels of the spring release of “Exhuma” comes another exportable Korean ghost story, one which actually preceded that film’s home-turf run by some months. Now arriving in North America from Magnet roughly one year after its release in South Korea, writer-director Jason Yu’s “Sleep” is in many respects “Exhuma’s” opposite number — a modestly-scaled domestic tale versus the outdoorsy, FX-laden, forty-minutes-longer sprawl of Jang Jae-hyun’s international hit. Both offer a satisfyingly twisty spin on “possession by angry restless spirit” terrain, leavening the suspense with wry character-based humor.
And yet, even though its commercial prospects may be less spectacular, “Sleep” may be the better of the two by a small margin. While lacking the bigger film’s dimension of political commentary, its restraint and concision make for a narrative that heads somewhere pointed, rather than being primarily a vehicle for escalating action climaxes. It’s also distinguished by a fine performance from male lead Lee Sun-kyun, in his penultimate role — the popular actor (best known offshore as the wealthy family patriarch in “Parasite”) committed suicide amidst tabloid-fueled allegations of drug abuse late last year.
Beginning and ending with the gentle, comedic irritant of a partner’s insistent snore, Yu’s screenplay introduces its central figures as a benign, mutually fond couple willing to overlook such minor faults in one another. Hyun-sun (Lee) is an actor who, thus far, has only progressed to bit parts on TV; expectant wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) has a generic office job. Nonetheless, they seem reasonably content, awaiting their first child and doting on a Pomeranian named Pepper.
This placid picture is first disturbed when Soo-jin gets woken by her husband’s snore — or rather its sudden absence. She finds him sitting bolt-upright in bed, mysteriously saying “Someone’s inside,” then literally falling back into deep slumber. His sleep-talking would be easy to ignore if immediately afterward there weren’t ominous noises in their Seoul apartment.
The next night, Hyun-sun adds sleepwalking to his nocturnal repertoire. A new neighbor downstairs (Kim Gook-hee) complains of hearing loud noises from their space for over a week, which makes no sense. Yet going forward, the husband keeps performing stranger and stranger actions while unconscious, remembering none afterward: Furiously scratching his skin, eating raw meat from the fridge, frightening the dog. At one point, his wife stops him in the nick from a potential death-plunge, as he’s pulled by an invisible force toward their highrise’s open bedroom window.
He’s diagnosed with a common sleep disorder, but the recommended treatments have little effect. Neither does a visit from a female shaman (Kim Kum-soo), who agrees with Soo-jin’s superstitious mother (Lee Kyung-jin) that what Hyun-sun needs is not medical attention but “divine intervention.” That intimidating lady thinks he’s being interfered with by a jealous ghost who wants our heroine for him/itself— away from the competing attentions of husband, pet and now newborn daughter. The paranormal entity’s actions duly grow more life-threatening towards exactly those parties.
Divided into three chapters of about a half-hour each, “Sleep” is more clever and involving than frightening, with little use for stock genre devices as banal as jump scares. It has almost no fantastical imagery and scant violence. What it does have is a credible depiction of inexplicable events attempting to wedge apart a couple who have no intention of giving one another up.
The leads have been cast as a marital duo before and their ingratiating chemistry feels natural, with both characters sporting a degree of slyly amusing guilelessness. Jung has attracted much of the film’s awards interest in the showier role, one she lends a humorous bent in its over-emotional display (Soo-jin cries at the drop of a hat) that gradually turns into real, edgy desperation. But Lee grounds the movie with sympathetic incredulity, and a convincingly earnest willingness to make any sacrifices on behalf of wife and child. His performance is a deft, charming epitaph to a prematurely ended career.
Though largely limited to the protagonists’ dwelling, “Sleep” never feels theatrical or claustrophobic. Its pace is unhurried but never slack, and the production design contributions are all astute without distracting from the intimately human scale of this supernatural crisis. That very tenor of quietly nuanced effectiveness may not make Yu’s first feature a standout for fans of flashier (let alone bloodier) horror, but it distinguishes him as a new director bringing precociously refined instincts to a fantasy-thriller conceit. The careful psychological detail and well-placed plot twists in his script also impress, their universality suggesting the possibility of a foreign remake — though you can bet that any such enterprise would most likely hard-sell the genre aspects Yu maximizes by underplaying.
