Set predominantly within an apartment, Bong Joon-ho protege Jason Yu’s ‘not really a horror’ hits the right balance between creepiness and drama.

Lee Sun-kyun (from Parasite (2019)) and Jung Yu-mi (from Train to Busan (2016)) play a young married couple Hyun-su and Soo-jin. Soo-jin is expecting their first baby and all is perfect until Hyun-su begins to wake in the night and sleep walk and talk.

From the start, this is creepy, as much by what we don’t see as what is shown. There is odd eating, bumps in the night and their dog Pepper is not happy. Always believe the dogs.

Touted as a horror, it’s more of a tense thriller as we try to work out if the flat is haunted, as Soo-jin’s mother thinks, or if it’s just an REM disorder. Cracks begin to appear everywhere, metaphorically of course, and I genuinely wasn’t sure where it was going. Jung does hysteria well and makes us doubt everything. There is a nice oscillation between our belief in Soo-jin’s sanity and Hyun-su’s culpability.

The denouement is a good solid one, deftly delivered.

Director: Jason Yu
Origin: South Korea (2023)
Language: Korean with English subtitles
Genre: Horror , Thriller

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