Sleep Tight (2011)
Directed by Jaume Balagueró
César, an unhappy concierge, maintains a peculiar relationship with the very diverse inhabitants of the upper-class apartment building where he works in Barcelona.
2 connections found
View:
2 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Sleep Tight to
Surely, 1BR has a bit more in common with cult-centric films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation than apartment horror like Polanski’s The Tenant or the underseen Spanish thriller Sleep Tight.
![[REC] poster](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/hgyJR4sgMsee6xMFM3xYiG6cDCh.jpg)
But Balagueró—best known for directing the first two parts of the [Rec] series—has a fine control of pacing and tone, and is able to keep Sleep Tight gripping throughout, right up its shocking final act.
Much like Jaume Balagueró’s telemovie Films To Keep You Awake: To Let and his shakicam shockers [Rec] and [Rec]2 (both co-directed with Paco Plaza), Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes) concerns characters locked in an apartment building with an unwelcome presence – only this time round, the focus is less on the perspective of the victims than of their persecutor, a frighteningly human kind of monster whose intrusive voyeurism (and worse) we are rather uncomfortably made to share.
Jaume Balagueró directed [Rec] , a highly effective horror film largely confined to a block of gloomy Barcelona flats plagued by carnivorous zombies.
[REC] director Jaume Balaguero forges what could be the start of a brilliant partnership with Luis Tosar in Sleep Tight, an immaculately-constructed, devilishly disturbing and wickedly funny thriller that mates Hitchcockian suspense with a specifically Polanski-esque brand of terror.
But in the hands of [REC] director Jaume Balagueró (breaking out of Spain’s inventive horror ghetto with a subtler project), the setup slowly takes on an ick factor, as homely, balding caretaker César (Luis Tosar) spends too much time staring at bouncy Barcelonian Clara (Marta Etura).
But the genius of [REC] director Jaume Balagueró’s latest is that it plumbs the depths of human darkness with such an extraordinary lightness of touch, it manages to entertain even as it shows an innocent woman falling inexorably apart.