A somnambulant actor (Lee Sun-kyun) and his pregnant wife (Jung Yu-mi) get a rude awakening in this K-horror they should have called Dozemary’s Baby.

The debut feature from Jason Yu (formerly Bong Joon Ho’s assistant director), Sleep has shades of Parasite in its escalation from domestic humour to eccentric horror. Its good nature and likeable characters makes their unravelling all the more alarming, as the husband’s sleepwalking behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre. Soon he is diagnosed with REM disorder, whose symptoms include eating raw meat in your sleep and listening to boring American rock bands.

Though it flirts with the supernatural the film is believable throughout, the wife’s reaction (ie. losing her mind) being totally reasonable considering her husband is literally sleepwalking into parenthood. This also allows the story to be genuinely ambiguous, since it is told from her sleep-deprived, hyper-protective perspective. The movie remains light on its feet while exploring real-world fears around parenthood, making it a worthy addition to the pregnancy scare sub-genre.

Yu does a lot with very little, isolating the couple to the confines of their apartment and leaving the most horrible moments to our imagination. This makes it a refreshingly uncynical modern horror flick, playfully peppered with Pomeranians, power drills and pregnancy bumps in the night. Fundamentally though it is a film about marriage, the reality of living together and not knowing which of you is more insane. Funny, scary and superbly acted, Sleep is sure to keep you up at night.