Sleep Tight (film)

Sleep Tight (Spanish: Mientras duermes; lit. 'While You Sleep') is a 2011 Spanish psychological thriller film directed by Jaume Balagueró. The film was developed under the title Flatmate[1] and stars Luis Tosar. In the film, Cesar, a Concierge of an apartment building is unable to reach happiness no matter what happens to him and has a goal to make the tenants upset. Clara proves to Cesar that making her upset is harder than he expected and things turn to a twisted event when her boyfriend Marcos visits her.In 2018, a South Korean remake of the film titled Door Lock was released.[2] While this movie told the story from perpetrator's perspective, the Korean movie told the same from the point of view of the victim.[3] Sleep Tight was considered one of the most anticipated films to be premiered at the 44th Sitges Film Festival.[4]

Sleep Tight
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJaume Balagueró
Produced byJulio Fernández
Written byAlberto Marini
Starring
Music byLucas Vidal
CinematographyPablo Rosso
Edited byGuillermo De La Cal
Production
company
Castelao Pictures
Distributed byFilmax
Release date
  • 28 December 2011 (2011-12-28) (France)
Running time
102 minutes
CountrySpain
LanguageSpanish
Budget$5 million
Box office$8.7 million

Plot

A concierge of an apartment in Barcelona named Cesar is on the roof of a building explaining his nature of not being able to find any happiness no matter what he does or what good things happen to him. As he wakes up in Claras apartment and begins his routine of working in the main lobby, Ursula, the daughter of another tenant, receives hush money from Cesar. Cesar visits his mom who is at the hospital and is awfully sick practically unable to speak to his son but listen to him talk about Clara. Veronica who is another tenant of Cesar asks him for a favor to take care of her dogs giving detailed directions on how to feed them. Entrusted to feed them, Cesar breaking her directions and feeds Rocio a slice of pie. Clara entering her apartment opens up letters she has received then tears them and throws them away all while Cesar is hiding under her bed waiting for her to fall asleep in order to use chloroform to keep her asleep so he can maliciously mess with her care product. It is the morning after sneaks out of Clara’s apartment with Ursula waiting outside and demands that she will keep her mouth shut if Cesar provides her with an adult movie. Cesar working in the lobby finds Veronica heading out of the apartment and he questions Veronica where Rocio is and she explains that Rocio has horrible diarrhea to something he may have eaten.

Ursula sneaking out of school goes to Cesar’s apartment and asks for the videotape and tells him that she and Clara talked about Cesar and the price for her keeping her mouth shut will be 100 euros. Cesar has also successfully angered another of the tenants by not taking care of the plants leading them to die. Visiting his mother at the hospital again Cesar says that he is close to wiping Clara’s smile off her face as his goal is to make his tenants frustrated. The cleaners of the apartment are informed by Cesar that the office was not cleaned properly which leads to the cleaner’s son being in trouble.

Cesar once again hiding under Clara’s bed uses chloroform on her to keep her in deep sleep and begins messing with more of Clara’s items in an attempt to make her upset and plants bug eggs in her apartment. A couple of days pass and Clara’s rashes which she was developing due to Cesar messing with her care products have slightly gone away, relieved for a second she finds many cockroaches in her apartment and decides to stay with her mom till Cesar fumigates her apartment. The police get involved to figure out who is harassing Clara and Cesar frames the cleaners’ son which results in him getting arrested.

Clara returns to the apartment and while Cesar hides under her bed he finds that she brought her boyfriend Marcos as well. Having accidentally dropped some chloroform on his face, Cesar makes a desperate attempt to leave the apartment quietly but realizes he has the wrong keys to the apartment leaving him locked inside. Cesar waking up in Clara’s shower begins to worry as Marcos had found Cesar’s sports bag with many suspicious items. Marcos catching Cesar trying to sneak out of the apartment he begins explaining his reason for being there. Successfully deceiving them, he leaves the apartment and heads downstairs only to find out he is gonna be vacated. Clara and Marcos about to go on a trip have to return as Clara turns out to be 4 weeks pregnant and Marco is surprised as he always used a condom when they had sex.

Marcos knocks at Cesar’s place looking for him and asks that he checks Clara’s apartment as he states there is a bug problem again. Cesar deceived to check the place out realizes that Marco has caught onto him sneaking into her place and has found what Cesar has been drugging her with. Cesar and Marco begin to fight and Cesar grabs a piece of glass and stabs Marcos’s neck killing him. Knowing that Ursula knows Cesar was involved in Marcos’s death, Cesar sneaks into her apartment and threatens Ursula to never rat him out to guarantee that Cesar does not go to jail. Clara having moved out of the apartment and having her baby, Cesar mails her a letter hoping that any time she looks at their child she will think of him, and he thanks her for helping him finally be happy.

Cast
Luis Tosar at the Sitges Film Festival
  • Luis Tosar as César
  • Marta Etura as Clara
  • Alberto San Juan as Marcos
  • Pep Tosar as Úrsula's father
  • Petra Martínez as Verónica
  • Amparo Fernández as The cleaning lady
  • Iris Almeida as Úrsula
  • Roger Morilla as The cleaning boy
  • Margarita Roset as César's mother
  • Manel Dueso as The commissioner

Production

Filmax narrated the film on the 2010 Cannes Film Festival[5] and named Jaume Balagueró as director.[6] Alberto Marini wrote the script of the film.[7] Having success with his animated series Rec (film series), Balagueró felt it was important to start on something new and went on to direct Sleep Tight. The film was Balaguerós first film in which he directed but had not participated in the writing in the film but the elements of the story is what intrigued him. Balaguero stated that it was a challenge to have story in point of view of the villain and not the victim, hoping to establish a morality play that would make the audience a necessary participant.[8] Balagueró cast in early May 2010 Luís Tosar[9] and Marta Etura for the leads.[10] Filmax and Balagueró filmed the project in Barcelona, Catalonia.[11] It is Balagueró's first film since Fragile alone on the directing chair.[12] The film had a budget of 5,000,000 Euros[13]

Music

Lucas Vidal is the composer of the film and the score is primarily on a principal Leitmotif which are melodic or dramatic passages to correspond to the plot of the film. Vidals score was nominated to the Jerry Goldsmith Awards of 2011, in the VII International Film Music Festival.[14] The film also features many songs such as Next 2 You by Buckcherry, Keep Me In Mind by Patti Page, I Got To Have Your Love by The Fantastic Four (band), I Got to Have Your Smile by The Fantastic Four.[15]

Release

Theatrical

Sleep Tight had it world premier at Austin, Texas at the Fantastic Fest in September 2011[16] before being officially released in Spain on October 14, 2011[17] and reaching the United States theater's in 2012.[18]

Home Media

Sleep Tight was made available on Video on demand on October 2012 but officially released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 8, 2013.[19]

Reception

Box Office

Sleep Tight opened across 285 cinemas being in release for 80 days weeks and on opening weekend it earned $1,090,093. In Spain the film grossed $4,658,981 domestically and worldwide it grossed $8,791,590.[20]

Critical response

The review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 94% approval rating based on 31 published reviews—a weighted average of 7.3 out of 10.[21] It has a score of 70 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[22]

Jonathan Holland of Variety (magazine) had positive comments about the film stating that Sleep Tight "designed to give audience sleepless nights, and mostly succeeds".[23] Simon Crook of Empire had similar comments to make stating that the film is "old-school, simmering with Hitchcockian suspense, but even the most hardened horror-heads will find its after-effects hard to brush off."[24] Film Comment's Sophie Blum rated the film as a "five-star creepy stalker movie" and praises Tosar and Balugueró for having concocted a Sweeney Todd or [insert your favorite psychopath here] for the 21st century." [25]

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times had mixed reviews claiming the chilly film works at first but that Balugueró "is so overtaken by his villain that he becomes like César, displaying an eagerness to play the role of tormentor, which kills both the movie’s pleasure and its flickering political subtext."[26]

Accolades

Sleep Tight won six awards at the 4th Catalan cinema Gaudí Awards: Gaudí award for Best Non-Catalan Language Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Leading Actor.[27]

See also

References
  1. Barton, Steve (3 May 2010). "Title Change: Flatmate Hopes You Sleep Tight". Dread Central. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  2. https://kaist455.com/2018/12/09/door-lock-2018/amp/
  3. https://asianmoviepulse.com/2019/07/film-review-door-lock-2019-by-lee-kwon/
  4. "Balagueró returns with classic thriller Sleep Tight". Cineuropa - the best of european cinema. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  5. Brown, Todd. "[REC] Director Jaume Balaguero Has A New FLATMATE". Twitch. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-01-11.
  6. Jaume Balagueró Preps Flatmate
  7. Jaume Balagueró tiene nuevo proyecto
  8. "Jaume Balaguero Talks SLEEP TIGHT". ScreenAnarchy. 2013-01-07. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  9. Luís Tosar To Become Jaume Balagueró's First Flatmate
  10. En el set de “Mientras duermes”, lo nuevo de Jaume Balagueró Archived 2011-07-20 at the Wayback Machine
  11. Director Jaume Balaguero Returns to Film with Sleep Tight for Filmax
  12. Jaume Balaguero Finds His Villain for Flatmate
  13. Luna, Emilio. "El antepenultimo mohicano" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  14. "Sleep Tight: Interview with Lucas Vidal". AsturScore (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  15. "Mientras duermes (2011) Soundtrack". RingosTrack. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  16. Press, Europa (2011-08-22). "'Mientras duermes', el último film de Jaume Balagueró, tendrá su estreno mundial en el Fantastic Fest de Austin". www.europapress.es. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  17. "Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes)". Cineuropa - the best of european cinema. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  18. Title Change: Flatmate Hopes You Sleep Tight
  19. "Jaume Balagueros Sleep Tight goes to DVD & Blu-ray this January". www.joblo.com. 2012-12-12. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  20. "Sleep Tight". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  21. "Sleep Tight (2012)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 18 September 2018.
  22. "Sleep Tight (2012)". Metacritic. CBS Interactive (CBS Corporation). Retrieved 10 May 2018.
  23. Holland, Jonathan (2011-10-24). "Sleep Tight". Variety. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  24. "Sleep Tight". Empire. 2013-02-19. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  25. "Review: Sleep Tight". Film Comment. 2012-10-29. Retrieved 2020-04-29.
  26. Dargis, Manohla (2012-10-25). "Maybe She Forgot to Tip the Super". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  27. "IV Gaudí Awards".
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