On demand: "Sleep"

Sleep is a Korean chiller conceived after the fashion of the Japanese genre master Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Writer-director Jason Yu presents us with an aspirational couple - he (Parasite's Lee Sun-kyun, in his penultimate role before his death last year) a jobbing actor, she (Jung Yu-mi) a pregnant executive of some kind - who share one of those ultra-cosy movie apartments that typically signal trouble to come. The trouble here transpires to be a not so little matter of insomnia. He wakes her up with a nasty start, then begins sleepwalking and clawing at his own face; soon, he's spending the wee small hours threatening to propel himself out of the window and doing for the pair's pet Pomeranian. (And all this before the baby arrives.) Very quickly, it becomes apparent that sleep deprivation, in this extreme case, stands for all those other niggles that prevent the brain from shutting down at night: her pre-emptive concerns about bringing new life into an uncertain world, his insecurities pertaining to his looks and career. Yu shows us the image of a perfect life in a dream home, and then begins to fill it with weakspots that threaten to undermine its very foundations.

The movie that results is as self-contained as that flat - those looking for another Parasite will likely be underwhelmed - but it allows Yu to maintain a tight focus and push here and there towards a heightened idea of interiority. If Kurosawa forms one influence, the Polanski of Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and The Tenant looks to have been another, as evidenced in streaks of varyingly black humour: the new father seeking alternative locations to catch a few stray zeds, the cutaways to a wall-mounted platitude ("Together We Can Overcome Anything"), the blue-haired mystic whose presence suggests this might in fact be a supernatural snafu. It's drolly funny that the couple's sleep vacillates, as if they've been set to competing against one another for the same seven hours of shuteye, though Yu isn't much interested in tormenting his characters: these actors are too likable, and we want them to work this thing out. Still, Sleep gets dreamier and more discombobulating as it goes on, with sequences that count as waking nightmares. The chi-chi projector the couple use to watch TV on in the first reel gets repurposed in the last for an infernal PowerPoint presentation given by one driven out of their mind; the electric drill used to secure the flat's fittings is eventually reached for as a threat. Mostly, Yu proceeds with a spare style and quiet intelligence that proves all the more compelling for being so lightly worn.

Sleep is currently available to rent via Prime Video, Curzon Home Cinema, YouTube and the BFI Player.