phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2024

Sleep



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 35m
Country: South Korea
Language: Korean
Genre Tags: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: A young, expectant wife must figure out how to stop her husband's nightmarish sleepwalking habits before he harms himself or his family.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: A masterpiece of shifting tones, slipping easily between quirky relationship drama and nightmare horror. Split into three chapters of increasing tension, showing both sides of a couple’s struggles with the husband’s violent sleepwalking episodes. Is there a scientific reason and solution, or spiritual problems requiring a shaman? The movie plays both sides equally, culminating with the funniest and scariest use of a PowerPoint presentation, and an ambiguous ending that’s simultaneously frightening and uplifting. Teamwork really does make the dream work.


Outside Reviews:

Simon Abrams
3.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Neither sudsy nor conventional, “Sleep” moves briskly with its characters as they try to unravel what may or may not be a spooky mystery. First, Hyun-su (Lee) wakes up from a dead sleep. “Someone’s inside,” he murmurs. Neither Hyun-su nor his pregnant wife, Soo-jin (Jung), can determine what that means. He thinks they can track, diagnose, and quarantine their new problem like a project that can be chipped away through trial and error. She, being an emotionally invested (though hardly passive) observer, goes down a darker, more harrowing path.


Matt Patches
Sleep turns sleepwalking into a supernatural slasher — and it’s wicked fun

So Sleep, now in U.S. theaters, was an immediate surprise, simply by being a Korean horror movie with a playful rhythm. Think the heightened naturalism of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite or The Host… but weirder. The feature debut of Jason Yu (whose previous credits include working as Bong’s assistant director on Okja) chronicles what happens to a newlywed couple when one partner’s sleep disorder takes the shape of a violent ghostly possession — and it may actually be one. As Yu explores the fallout of the situation, Sleep careens from domestic drama into the bizarre, in often funny ways.