Director – Jason Yu – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 95m
***1/2
A pregnant woman becomes convinced that her husband is possessed when he starts sleepwalking and otherwise behaving oddly in his sleep at night – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 12th
One night, a wife wakes up and looks at her husband. He’s sitting on the end of the bed and says, calmly, “someone’s inside”. She hears banging. She gets up, and we see she is pregnant. Fearing an intruder, she goes into the next room, household drill in hand. It’s the door to the verandah banging, wedged open with his flip-flop. She finds their dog, Pepper, a Pomeranian, hiding behind the box container with the laundry liquid. Returning to the bedroom, she sees him wearing one flip-flop.
Sleep is a horror thriller about both a sleep disorder and intermittent possession by a ghost. The wife Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) is a former film executive, the husband Hyun-Su (Lee Sun-kyun) a struggling actor in whose career she believes. On their wall, a wooden plaque proclaims, “Together, we can overcome anything”. Their new downstairs neighbour Min-jung (Kim Guk-hee), who moved in after the difficult old man who used to complain to the couple about the noise moved out, pops round to say hello and complain about the banging that’s been going on for the last week.
Hyun-Su’s strange sleepwalking episodes continue. One night he involuntarily scratches the side of his face, so much so that it’s all bloody in the morning and his current acting part has to be written out. On another occasion, Soo-jin follows a trail of dripping blood to find Pepper cowering under the bed. Then there’s the night Hyun-su wanders into the kitchen to binge out of the fridge before going to the bedroom window and almost toppling over the balcony before Soo-jin pulls him back in.
Clearly, enough is enough, so they go for an appointment with the doctor (Yoon Kyung-ho) at the hospital, who diagnoses REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder and prescribes medication to fix it and various courses of action to follow. So they set about making the house safe from possible accidents.
After their baby is born, Soo-jin’s mother (Lee Kyung-jin), convinced he is being possessed, first advises her daughter to tape a protective spell under the bed where her husband sleeps, for protection. The situation worsens as wife provides husband with a tight sleeping bag to stop him moving around and puts a padlock on the bedroom door; but she still wants him sleeping in the apartment.
With Soo-jin’s faith in the doctor evaporating, her mum brings round shaman Madame Haegoong (Kim Keum-soon) who informs them that a ghost has followed Soo-jin into the apartment and is entering the husband when he’s asleep. But who could it be? Madame Haegoong wants a name to perform an exorcism rite, so Soo-jin starts looking up old boyfriends on the web to see who it could be. Convinced by the idea that her husband is possessed, she becomes increasingly unstable.
A change of medication by the doctor seems to solve the problem, and Hyun-su feels better than ever. But then his deranged wife absconds from the care home in which she’s been placed. He returns home to find the flat covered with paper spells and her waiting for him, planning to make the ghost leave him before it’s too late…
This supernatural horror thriller takes place mostly in one couple’s apartment. Some of the time, you’re siding with the wife even as she becomes increasingly loopy, some of the time you’re siding with the husband as he is apparently (but is he really?) cured while his wife is completely nuts. You have sympathy for downstairs neighbour Min-jung, particularly when Soo-jin, who calmly explains how she knows Hyun-su is possessed, puts an electric drill to Min-jung’s head and starts drilling into it. The mother seems sincere in her beliefs about spirits, and the shaman in convincing enough when she appears.
Putting babies or family pets in danger is an effective enough strategy, and you certainly feel sympathy of both. As you do, on different occasions, for both the husband and the wife.
Yet, there’s something about playing off a medical disorder against possession by a ghost that doesn’t quite work here. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t; maybe a bit more work on the script would have helped.
Sleep is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, July 12th.
Trailer: