Mientras duermes
Director: Jaume Balagueró
Writer: Alberto Marini
Cast: Luis Tosar, Marta Etura, Alberto San Juan, Petra Martínez, Iris Almeida
Part of: /slash Filmfestival’s slashing Europe [The /slash Filmestival needs help! Please support genre movies in Austria, if you can.]

Plot:
César (Luis Tosar) is a seemingly normal doorman. He gets the newspaper, delivers letters and does small repairs. But what César actually strives for is to make everybody as unhappy as he possibly can. In Clara (Marta Etura) he seems to have found his match – no matter what he throws at her, Clara still smiles. And so the situation keeps on escalating.

Sleep Tight is very tense and really, really creepy. Basically, it really achieves what The Resident failed to do: It actually made me happy that there’s no room under my bed for somebody to lie there.

Most of the film hinges on Luis Tosar. But he is the perfect cast for the role, so that is really no problem. He manages to sell César so perfectly that on the one hand, it is absolutely clear that he is creepy and scary and completely unhinged, but on the other hand it is perfectly understandable that practically nobody would notice that about him.

Coming out of the film, I heard a few people say that they actually started rooting for César. That didn’t happen for me but I can understand how you’d get there. Maybe because of the fact that I did not start rooting for César, I have to admit that the ending didn’t work that well for me. But it was okay.

Balagueró masterfully leads through the film. He starts slow, but there’s always an underlying creepiness, so right from the start you’re just a little tense, waiting for something to happen. And then he delivers when things do start to happen. Especially because everything feels so inevitable, but also because César’s transgressions are so damn private.

In any case, I’ll just quickly check under my bed whether my non-existing doorman really isn’t there.

Summarising: Recommended. If you really want to be creeped out. And maybe only if you aren’t living alone.