Director Jason Yu talking to an actress lying in bed.

‘Sleep’ director Jason Yu admits his biggest fears

The South Korean director on learning from Bong Joon-Ho and the very real horrors of health care

From left, director Jason Yu and actress Jung Yu-mi during the making of "Sleep."

Courtesy of Jason Yu

What is your biggest fear? Some might say a not-so-distant dystopian apocalypse, while others might be scared stiff by a little paranormal activity. For director Jason Yu, both are terrifying in their own ways. “I think for cinema, shamanism is much scarier, you know, because there's ghosts [and] spirits involved…but in reality, I think medical science is much more scary,” he says.

Yu recently made his feature-length directorial debut with Sleep, an intense thriller centered on one husband’s nightmarish sleepwalking behavior. The director wanted to portray the absurdity of the coexistence between science and spiritualism within South Korea in his first movie. As the film progresses, the newlyweds, Hyun-su (Lee Sun-kyun, in one of his final roles after his death in December) and Soo-jin (Jung Yu-Mi), desperate to find a cure for the former’s strange actions, begin to stray away from traditional medicine and seek out a shaman.

For a country so highly regarded for its scientific and technological advancements, South Korea’s belief in the otherworldly has stood the test of time. In 2022, it was estimated that the country’s shamanism population was somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 out of its population of 51 million, while Google searches for the terms “shaman” and “fortune-telling” have doubled over the past five years within South Korea, due to the influence of social media

Meanwhile, South Korea currently faces a major medical strike as the government proposes to increase medical school enrollment quotas. And as of September, patients are still struggling to access proper medical care, with “emergency responders…struggling to find hospitals that can take patients in, and a handful of emergency clinics nationwide partially suspending operations.”

It's these realities that scare Yu more than the monster under the bed. “In the end, every person is just bags of flesh, who are waiting for something terrifying, medically, to happen that will shatter their lives one day,” he says bluntly. “Just the prospect of that inevitable death, you know, and…the fear that I have that I might not be able to be treated medically because of those things terrify me in reality much more than the shamanism.”

Director Jason Yu sitting at a computer monitor while someone looks of his shoulder.

From left, director Jason Yu and the late Lee Sun-kyun.

Courtesy of Jason Yu

While real-life events may have inspired Yu’s film thematically, the director also drew visual and technical influences from other films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, and Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja—the latter being one of first films on which Yu served as an assistant director. He humbly brushes off claims of being the Parasite director’s protege, but confesses that Okja was “my biggest influence because I never went to film school, and I never had been taught what filmmaking was.”

“[From] my two and a half years working on that film from pre-production to post production, even promotion, I think I learned everything I know about filmmaking,” Yu adds. “So I'm very grateful for that experience.”

As a new director, Yu shyly admits he believes he’s in no position to give anybody advice. However, his creative process is one aspiring filmmakers should consider heeding to. “What really worked for me was that I had small steps and gradual developments, you know, small goals. And every time I achieved those goals, I just had a slightly bigger one,” he explains. “For example, the first goal ever that I had was to write a short script, a short screenplay. And after I did that, it was then to create it. To direct the film. And after I completed the film, the next step was to maybe get it into festivals and maybe be accepted. That was the goal. And when I was accepted, the next goal was maybe getting an award someday, and then et cetera, et cetera.”

Director Jason Yu wearing a mask while talking to a woman.

"Sleep" is Jason Yu's feature-length directorial debut.

Courtesy of Jason Yu

“Everything is very vague and gooey and you sort of have to kind of allocate the steps yourself and roadmap your career that way,” Yu says.

Sleep is now playing in theaters across the United States.

Published on October 22, 2024

Words by Ruth Moon Lopez

Ruth Moon Lopez is a Canada-based journalist with a knack for writing about entertainment, history and intersections between the two. She also stands at 5'0" but this doesn't stop her from reaching new heights. You can find her on Instagram @maythisbeluv and see more of her work at ruthmoonlopez.com.