Sleep

Official Selection, 2023 Critics Week, Cannes Film Festival

Hyunsoo and Soojin are living a newlywed couple’s dream: chasing after goals together, raising a fluffy dog, expecting a new baby.

But danger creeps into their life when Hyunsoo (Lee Sun-kyun, Parasite) suddenly announces in his sleep that someone is inside their home. It could just be sleep-talking, except it turns out he might have been right. When Hyunsoo starts sleep-eating raw meat, sleep-scratching his face with abandon, and sleep-threatening the safety of their family, Soojin’s sleepless nights become filled with full-on anxiety, even after a doctor calmly diagnoses him with a curable sleeping disorder. As Soojin (Jung Yu-mi, Train to Busan) begins to suspect Hyunsoo’s sleepwalking may have supernatural causes, a once-unbreakable domestic bond morphs into a claustrophobic nightmare, challenging Soojin’s belief that their love can overcome all.

Fresh from Cannes, mixing fantasy, horror, and gripping mystery, director Jason Yu’s directorial debut adds a new twist to the domestic drama, reimagining one couple’s conflict as a taut Badabook-like horror thriller.

– Alissa Tu