Sleep is not to be slept on @TIFF2023

Director Jason Yu has worked under the helm of now-legendary Bong Joon-ho. It is only destiny to make a name for himself with his directorial debut film Sleep. Selected under the Midnight Madness programming, the young director is taking Korean horror cinema to the next level. In this film, he attacks a subject that we all know too well and our lack thereof. Lee Sun-kyun plays Hyun-su who has started to develop some abnormal sleeping habits. There is much concern from his wife Soon-yin, played by Jung Yu-mi, who is about to bear their first child. She is ready to go to great lengths to cure this growing problem of his sleep disorder.

Sleep is well under the subgenre of being a psychological horror because it focuses on the relationship between the two. He sets out for the two of them so that they will overcome all obstacles. The sign on the wall in their apartment lays their mission out. They thought he was seeing a ghost at first. But things get more strange each passing night. It gets to the point where they have to go see a sleep doctor who diagnoses Hyun-su with a REM sleep disorder. Any help this couple can get is needed because they know they need to get all the sleep they can get when their child is born.

Fatal Attraction

Director Jason Yu’s Sleep works so well because it focuses on the relationship between the two and how both of them go to lengths in order to save their marriage. Yu is Adrian Lyne influenced as you can see that both of them are getting paranoid and borderline psychotic over each other. In addition to the fact that they are both lacking sleep, they are both becoming delusional which does not help this relationship at all.

Furthermore, there is nobody really to save them aside from their doctor who is prescribing Hyun-su medication which makes this relationship relatable universally. There are only a few introductions of other characters which are their neighbour downstairs and her child and her father who passed away. Other than that it is only Hyun-su and Soon-yin which makes their relationship dynamics far from boring and on the edge of your seat. Yu really builds a story between two people about the most challenging obstacles that they need to address. Yu’s hidden message is that is only the two of them that can solve their problems. Whether or not it goes down south or not is where the audience finds out.