Sleep Tight

Stars: Luis Tosar, Marta Etura, Alberto San Juan, Petra Martinez, Roger Murilla, Iris Almeida

Director: Jaume Balagueró

A creepy chiller from Spain with an equally creeepy, unpleasant central character without any redeeming features.

César (Tosar) is the doorman/day clerk at a big Barcelona apartment block. Blackness has consumed his mind and he can only find relief - which he calls happiness - in causing pain to others.

Each night he contemplates throwing himself off the hotel roof, while his weekly visits to his hospitalised mother exist only to torment her with his dark deeds and darker thoughts.

César is obsessed with one particular tenant, the happy-go-lucky Carla (Etura). and is determined to wipe the permanent grin off her face. Each night he uses his passkey to enter her apartment, lies under her bed, then drugs her and sleeps beside her. By day, he sends her deeply insulting letters and e-mails.

But when Clara's hitherto absent boyfriend (San Juan) comes back into her life after six weeks away, things begin to unravel, especially when the blackmailing demands of the nasty sub-teen girl in the next apartment begin to escalate.

Tosar is thoroughly unpleasant without being chilling, in a well-made film that fails to excite owing to our failure to find any sympathy with his character.

David Quinlan

Spain 2011. UK Distributor: Metrodome. Colour (unspecified).
103 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 26 Feb 2013