Rating: NR | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: September 6th, 2023 (South Korea) / September 2yth, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Lotte Entertainment / Magnet Releasing
Director(s): Jason Yu
Writer(s): Jason Yu

Someone’s inside.

The film opens as Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) wakes up in the middle of the night to find her husband’s (Lee Sun-kyun’s Hyun-su) pillow empty. Turning, she finds him sitting at the foot of the bed muttering “someone’s inside” before falling backwards to recommence his snoring. Were those words part of a dream? That’s the logical answer until Soo-jin hears a bang in the distance. Maybe it was a warning—that Hyun-su woke just long enough to register what was happening without actually regaining consciousness. She realizes she must investigate the noise herself upon discovering he won’t open his eyes.

It’s the dread born from her uncertainty that writer/director Jason Yu weaponizes throughout his feature debut Sleep. Not knowing if someone broke in. Not knowing if Hyun-su is awake. Not knowing what he might do in his sleep once the danger inherent to his late-night excursions escalates. Not knowing if the man next to Soo-jin is still the man she married at all. Because there exists an illogical explanation for every logical one. Hyun-su might simply be suffering from a sleeping disorder. Or, as Soo-jin’s mother hypothesizes, he might have been possessed by a ghost hellbent on revenge.

Split into three chapters—before the birth of Soo-jin and Hyun-su’s child, after the birth, and the culmination of everything we’ve seen and heard thus far—Yu does well to amplify both possibilities. It’s science vs. mysticism. It’s the psychological strain of a palpable fatigue vs. that of supernatural malice. And because the couple is split down the middle (albeit in reverse of what you’d expect considering the believer is a business executive and the skeptic is an actor), nothing that either of them wants to try is fully embraced by the other. They cannot take the chance that putting all their eggs in the wrong basket may result in their baby’s death.

The result is a tense affair that never feels repetitive despite the continued cycle of fear. Yes, the action and suspense stems from Hyun-su going to bed and Soo-jin’s experience dealing with what occurs, but the circumstances and consequences are always different. Always worse. It gets to the point where they cannot trust their meticulous plans will work. Not when there are so many variables at play. So, when both of them are stretched the thinnest, the potential for tragedy rises to a fever pitch. Something must give. Their patience. Their marriage. Maybe even their sanity. What’s so great about this duality, though, is that the insane option might make more sense.

Lee and Jung deliver great performances with their composure and grace gradually devolving as they move closer towards a wild climax. It’s the type of ending I’ve admittedly wanted from a bunch of the films these past few months—one with a clear and worthy payoff. Too often filmmakers have straddled that line between realism and fantasy only to never pick a side (or, worse, seemingly choose only to stop before having to back it up). Yu understands that a potentially mentally unstable Soo-jin will match the violence of a potentially possessed Hyun-su. That’s the true horror: that humanity can be just as terrifying as any malevolent spirit.

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Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Yu-mi in SLEEP; courtesy of Magnet Releasing.