SLEEP TIGHT – Fantastic Fest Review

Warning! Seeing SLEEP TIGHT could keep you from sleeping for nights. If not, you may still find yourself checking under your bed. No, this isn’t a tale about the boogieman, but it is the story of an entirely different kind of monster, one that may be hiding in plain sight in anyone’s life.

SLEEP TIGHT is written by Alberto Marini and directed by Jaume Balaguero, one half of the creative team that brought you REC and REC2. This is the story of an average looking door man named Cesar (Luis Tosar), a deeply depressed and apathetic human being who masterfully hides his disdain for the world and the inhabitants of the apartment building he serves beneath the disguise of a well mannered and hard working gentleman. What becomes increasingly apparent, is that Cesar ranks somewhere between a stalker and a serial killer on the sociopath scale. Above all else, Cesar is a creepy dude.

What keeps Cesar going each day is his desire to make those around him unhappy. Frequently confiding his disturbing secret only to his hospitalized mother, speechless and bed ridden, Cesar’s focus is finely tuned on an attractive and endlessly cheery resident named Clara (Marta Etura). Using his friendly and charming alter ego to win her trust, Cesar embarks on a long standing series of personal and physical violations against Clara without her having the slightest knowledge of what’s happening. Cesar is determined to ruin Clara’s life.

SLEEP TIGHT may sound like a brutally vicious and potentially violent horror film, but the truth is that comedy is the bedfellow of the film’s more obvious roots in horror. Steeped in subtle, yet strongly scripted dark humor, the audience will likely feel as bad for their laughter as they feel entertained by this surprisingly fresh twist on the psycho thriller genre. Immensely creepy and every bit as iconic as Norman from PSYCHO, Cesar does what few characters on screen can celebrate… simultaneously developing both a hatred and a love for the antagonist.

Cesar is a very smart, cunning and clever man, but is not without his vices or his share of complications. Throughout the film, Cesar must also deal with the least likely of blackmailers, a witness in part to his dubious acts of trespassing, adding an additional layer to the humor, while also serving as a building block to quite an intense climactic moment near the end of the film. SLEEP TIGHT is methodical in its approach, carefully laid out like the best of Alfred Hitchcock’s films.

SLEEP TIGHT is not only a showcase for some inventive plot twists, but the film looks amazing. The cinematography from Pablo Rosso is richly aged, but vivid. Warm tones prevail with an old country feel, not unlike the work of Gordon Willis for THE GODFATHER: PART II. This not only adds to the flavor of the apartment building serving as a character, but also encourages a false sense of safety in the viewer’s mind, an element of storytelling that contributes to out mixed emotions toward Cesar. Should we be rooting for him, or be entirely appalled by his actions?

There is certainly a fine line delineating the black comedy from the dark nature of the story, but its a line we willingly cross in favor of an enjoyably bizarre tale of human interaction. SLEEP TIGHT peels back the superficiality of society, depicting one extreme scenario where Cesar is a man who makes it his life’s purpose to expose the rampant insincerity that surrounds him.