There comes a point in every film festival when you can no longer fight the inevitable. Yes, it is a privilege to be here in Cannes: everything is wonderful, there are countless movies, quite a few parties, pastries for every meal, cinema, cinema, cinema. But it is a pace of life not exactly sustainable beyond the ten days you’re on the ground, spending maybe twenty hours awake every day.

What I’m saying is: I need a nap.

But then comes along Sleep, Jason Yu’s taut, electric thriller about a husband and wife whose lives are thrown into disarray when he starts behaving unusually in his sleep, and you have to sit up straight. Or, in my case, manage my micro-naps differently. As I dragged my tired feet to the Espace Miramar (approximately twenty minutes outside of the central hub of Cannes) for the 10:15pm premiere of Yu’s film, I knew he was going to have to help me out here.

He most certainly did. Every time my head gently fell, it was lifted up by a thunderous crash on screen, or by a resounding gasp throughout the auditorium. Even a laugh on occasion! Yu, who cut his teeth as Bong Joon-ho’s assistant director on Okja and has also worked with the likes of Lee Chang-dong, has already learned from these masters how to keep an audience engaged and amazed. I can confirm this from my experience of Sleep, when I was at the lowest of lows, the most tired of tired, exactly halfway through this festival, at the latest possible hour they could screen a 95-minute movie in a 24-hour day.

Writing on Letterboxd after the screening, Savannah Sabol describes Sleep as if “Parasite and Hereditary had a child.” It checks out—Sleep has the terror, the comedy, and a similarly rapturous audience at its world premiere that sent Parasite all the way from the Croisette to the Oscars four years ago. (It also shares an actor in Lee Sun-kyun, who played Mr Park in Bong’s hit film, while co-lead Jung Yu-mi will be familiar from Train to Busan and many Hong Sang-soo films.) 

“Certainly wasn’t sleeping through this one,” wrote Emmy the morning after the premiere, and I commend their efforts. I was more in Jons’ camp: “Ironically I nearly dozed off during this one. Not the movie’s fault, I slept three hours. That’s Cannes baby!”

Jons’ review seconds my motion that Sleep is the one to watch in this state. It’s a cautionary tale about our tired little brains and the fucked-up shit that masters can teach their students so very well. Do not snooze on putting this one on your watchlists.