Jaume Balagueró’s ‘Sleep Tight’ (2011) & ‘Venus’ (2022)

Directed by: Jaume Balagueró || Produced by: Julio Fernández [1], Carolina Bang, Alex de la Iglesia [2]

Screenplay by: Alberto Marini [1], Jaume Balagueró, Fernando Navarro [2] || Starring: Luis Tosar, Marta Etura, Alberto San Juan [1], Ester Expósito, Ángela Cremonte, Inés Fernández, Magüi Mira, Aten Soria, María José Sarrate, Sofía Reyes, Fernando Valdivielso, Federico Aguado [2]

Music by: Lucas Vidal [1], Vanessa Garde [2] || Cinematography: Pablo Rosso || Edited by: Guillermo de la Cal [1], Luis de la Madrid [2] || Country: Spain || Language: Spanish

Running Time: 100-102 minutes || 1 = Sleep Tight, 2 = Venus

For some inexplicable reason — maybe because I can’t read at times or because I’m just thick — I thought the found-footage REC (2007, 2009) series was directed solely by prolific Spanish genre filmmaker Paco Plaza, whereas in reality it was a true co-directorial effort between him and fellow Spanish auteur Jaume Balagueró. Maybe Plaza’s alliterative name stuck in my brain better because, after reviewing the first two and most famous REC installments, I sampled other movies by Plaza (e.g. Verónica [2017], Sister Death [2023], Who Kills by Iron [2019]) without thinking twice about Balagueró’s filmography for months afterward.

As luck would have it, two of the Balagueró solo-films produced after his REC breakout, Sleep Tight and Venus, retain the distinctive auteur touches he and his professional colleague showcased with REC. One of those two films I would place above REC in terms of cinematic execution, while the other is a well meant but muddled genre hybrid that struggles with a limited budget.

Luis Tosar (left, foreground) attempts to escape Marta Etura’s (right, background) apartment after he “accidentally” fell asleep inside the night before.

The former, Sleep Tight (Mientras duermes, or literally “While You Sleep”), stars chameleonic actor Luis Tosar as a secretly miserable, parasitic monster of a man. The fact that the best movie of Plaza’s I’ve seen thus far (Who Kills by Iron) also stars the venerable Galician lead man, was not lost on me as Sleep Tight developed its narrative. Tosar portrays a nightmarish apartment concierge in Barcelona, hiding in plain sight as an ordinary working man, but underneath is a devious, invasive bastard who takes his internal misery out on his tenants in the most ruthless passive-aggressive methods imaginable. Throughout its first two acts, Sleep Tight shows how Tosar methodically toys with his social targets through the meticulousness of a serial-killer, contaminating the pet food of one tenant, neglecting the care of houseplants for another, and sabotaging the cleaning efforts of the building janitorial staff. Of particular note is his ire toward female lead Marta Etura, a tenant whose genuine kindness toward others and organic, unbounded optimism drives Tosar’s sadistic cynicism up a wall.

By the third act, Sleep Tight metamorphosizes from a nihilistic drama in the vein of Yorgos Lanthimos (e.g. The Killing of a Sacred Deer [2017]), Nikhil Nagesh Bhat (e.g. Brij Mohan Amare Rahe [2018]), Michael Haneke (e.g. Cache [2005]), or Andrey Zvyagintsev (e.g. Leviathan [2014]) into an unabashed crime thriller, though it maintains its dark nihilism throughout (see also: No Country for Old Men [2007], Irréversible [2002]). Your sympathies seesaw between the protagonist’s morbid relatability and that of his victims a la The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), while a combination of clever blocking, framing, and detailed mise-en-scène help stage a variety of suspenseful sequences involving complicated hide-and-seek to bloody murder.

Far less focused in concept and execution is the supernatural horror/crime drama crossover, Venus. Balagueró’s latest feature plays like a cheaper, slower, poor man’s version of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (1981, 1987, 1992), unable to combine the best elements of its gory occult horror and tense gangster film elements. Although the film’s premise — go-go dancer Ester Expósito seeks shelter in her sister’s dilapidated apartment complex after robbing a mafioso’s drug stash, but said apartment happens to be controlled by witches that study the Cthulhu Mythos — feels ripe for the sort of movie that shifts genres one to two acts into their story (e.g. Psycho [1960], Audition [1999], Kill List [2011], The Cabin in the Woods [2012], One Cut of the Dead [2017]), Venus ends up a muddled hybrid mess. The film slows to a crawl after its tense opening act, its story bloated with far too many supporting characters and cross-cutting between them too often, as if multiple slow-moving stories are supposed to feel more exciting than one. The gruesome horror elements are limited to a handful of creepy visuals and a few blood squibs in the third act, as if Balagueró didn’t have enough money to execute the over-the-top, action-packed finale toward which the film clearly builds.

Although its imagery recalls the cosmic dread of H. P. Lovecraft (Venus is loosely adapted from the author’s short story, The Dreams in the Witch House [1933]), numerous feature films old (e.g. In the Mouth of Madness [1995], Event Horizon [1997]) and recent (e.g. The Void [2016], Suitable Flesh [2023]) have channeled Lovecraftian horror far better.

Top to bottom, I find it interesting how my favorite solo-directed movies by Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró both (1) star Luis Tosar in the lead roles and (2) are one the least horror-centric features in those respective directors’ filmographies. The simplest explanations for that pattern are that Tosar is a great, versatile actor and that Plaza and Balagueró may, in fact, have a better knack for conveying “everyday” dramatic horror than more traditional supernatural horror. Most of their horror works I’ve sampled thus far appear to fight their budgetary limitations, but the most obvious upsides of dramatic cinema, as any rookie or arthouse filmmaker will agree, are their modest production requirements. My opinion on these filmmakers’ original claims to fame, the REC series, has soured over the years, yet I remain fascinated enough by their auteur styles to explore the rest of what they have to offer.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Creepy from the outset but horrifying by its third act, Sleep Tight puts its audience in a unique, disturbing position thanks to its nihilistic, vindictive stalker protagonist, developing its small cast and memorable location thanks to great underlying tension throughout its narrative. Venus, on the other hand, has great ideas for a Spanish riff on both Sam Raimi and Lovecraftian horror, but wastes them thanks to a crime drama component that never gels with the rest of the script thanks to an anemic, overedited pace.

—> Sleep Tight comes RECOMMENDED thanks to its creative approach to its dramatic sandbox, while Venus is NOT RECOMMENDED thanks to its tonal indecisiveness and inability to pull the Evil Dead-trigger.

? I love how Tosar uses the magical “film anesthesia” of chloroform, which, like other sedatives on film, has super-effective, instantaneous effect.