Sleep

Jason Yu's debut with his first film is truly satisfying, offering us an interesting and addictive suspense that overflows with tension with the intelligence of Korean cinema.

With a small cast where the main couple Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-Kyun steal the show, they manage to captivate with the true suffering that the situation that surrounds them brings and that their director knows how to handle in a balanced way between terror, suspense and touches of humor that lead us to have a truly effective film throughout its entire journey.

The greatest virtue of its script is knowing how to use the mix between the language of terror with a moving story of domestic life and the difficulties of marriage, and it does so with all that touch of a brilliant staging by its director and a BSO that sticks like the best companion so that everything fits together perfectly both visually, aesthetically and sound-wise.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the film is not perfect, as we find a final part that is a little more abrupt than all of his initial work, but it does not prevent us from pleasantly enjoying what we are seeing.

An interesting bet that brings us a gratifying debut from a director worth taking into account, and that provides us with a fun Korean horror thriller that works with intelligence and simplicity at the same time.

A fine debut thriller from Jason Yu. It was shown in Cannes and was pretty well received by critics. Now, after finally seeing it, I'll be joining those who recommend it.

This is a playful exercise in subverting genre expectations. The premise uses horror tropes in interesting ways, without succumbing to overwrought melodrama or clichés. A lot can be said about its expert direction; Yu finely balances humor and horror, and the script mischievously makes you question whether what you're seeing is paranormal or psychological in nature. He is enormously helped by Lee Sun-kyun (a formidable actor at this point) and the always lovely Jang Yu-mi. Their couple has loads of chemistry that is utilized to great effect.

Also, the short-ish runtime of 94 minutes ensures no minute is wasted and no plot point unnecessarily protracted. A hearty recommendation if you like your thrillers twisted and adventurous.

Sleep come with some pretty good credentials and i was looking forward to checking it out. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations as i found it lacking in story development and unable to create the desired levels of tension one could reasonably expect from a film of this type. The performances were fine but there were quite a few gaps in the story with too little character development taking place. Also, there were too many examples of the characters playing either very passively or unwittingly to the point of losing credibility. The end of the film was not able to create anywhere near the drama I could tell everyone was going for and it felt a it forced. Sleep isn't all but still a bit disappointing.

This is a solid little Korean horror film, with a simple plot that's executed well. The acting from the two leads, Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun, is top-notch. Jung particularly is great as the wife.

Where the film falters is in its open-endedness. There's a death early in the film that's seemingly significant for a few minutes, then the characters seemingly forget about it, then it's brought up again later in the film. And later in the film a character disappears then comes back without any real explanation. It left me wondering if perhaps the editor mistakenly edited out the scene showing what occurred between the character going missing and then popping up again. It just was bizarre. But some may consider this inexplicability to be a strength that adds to the spookiness. That leads me to the next point.

The great thing about this film is that, just like the characters, we're unsure of what's really going on here until the end. Is the husband mentally ill? Does he have a sleep disorder? Is he a ghost? Is he possessed? Is he acting? The film does a good job sprinkling in different possibilities throughout the runtime.

Sleep isn't a masterpiece but it's a pretty good debut from Jason Yu with strong directing, interesting writing and great performances from the cast members. Yu's direction and writing does a pretty good job on balancing out the tones of comedy and horror and creating a good sense of tense and terrifying atmospheres surrounding the setting and characters. The main premise is definitely very interesting as I don't see many movies focus on horror elements regarding sleepwalking or so forth. The narrative, while does have some faults and could have explored certain aspects a little more, is solid with good dialogue and executions being satisfying.

All of the performances are really good as each of the cast members does a good job on performing their characters. The soundtrack, production sets and the dialogue is pretty good too. While some depth in the characters could have been explored a bit, I found the characters to be entertaining to observe. There are some moments that were well-executed, especially a scene regarding PowerPoint's that was really entertaining. On the structure, the movie is a slow-burn but not once the movie felt slow or dull.

Overall, I am impressed with Jason Yu's first feature. No doubt there are some flaws but Yu's talent is pretty impressive enough to not overshadow the entire movie. I look forward to see what Jason Yu can offer in the future with his talents.