Mientras Duermes (Sleep Tight) – A Horror that Plays with your Mind Rather than Your Gag Reflex!

From the director of the brilliant Spanish horror ‘REC’ comes the new and equally brilliant horror/thriller ‘Sleep Tight’ (original title Mientras Duermes).

Sleep Tight is about an apartment conierge with an unhealthy obsession for one of the women living in the apartment block. He believes he was born without the ability to be happy, and he goes about trying to make life a misery for everyone around him to make up for his lack of happiness. While most of the tenants are easily agitated, Clara continues to be cheerful and upbeat despite his increasingly terrifying attempts to make her life difficult. With a convincing and cleverly sly dual personality he goes about being both the good and bad guy, and his attempts to ruin her life become more and more twisted, made even more challenging when her boyfriend turns up.

I wrongly assumed this would be a ‘horror’ horror, based on the directors filmography, the write ups and posters, however I was pleasantly surprised with a deep, dark and thrilling psychological horror that plays with your mind more so than your gag reflex.

I’ll start with the performance of lead actor Luis Tosar whom I’ve never heard of! His performance was absolutely fantastic, I can’t fault it! He has the perfect face for the part with really dark creepy eyes, honestly if I saw him in the street now I would probably run away, he played the part so well! He’s quiet and pensive  and he does the dual personality flawlessly, one minute he’s the kind hero, willing to bend over backwards to help people, and the next he’s a complete psycho.

I love how the story is told from his perspective, opening it with his narration explaining how he’s unable to feel happiness immediately makes the audience play right into his hands, which represents exactly how he plays with people, gets them to trust him and then try his utmost to break them. I was rooting for a vile psychopath throughout the whole film, actually praying that he didn’t get caught and almost shouting at the TV for him to ‘get the hell out!’ when he was about to be caught, his character and the way the story is told manipulates the audience the same way he manipulates his victims.

Things get very very twisted, among other things he hides under Clara’s bed, waits until she’s asleep and then chloroforms her so that he can do all sorts of nasty things, including injecting all her cosmetics with a substance that makes her break out in a rash all over. 

Without wanting to give away spoilers, because I honestly think everyone should watch this film, the ending is terrifying, it’s enough to churn your stomach! It’s all so cleverly done, it gets right under your skin. It’s not scary in the conventional jump-scare sense, but in many ways its a lot scarier! It’s so believable and possible, and it’s a terrifying reminder of what people are capable of.

Go and watch this film, I promise you you won’t regret it!