Sleep Tight

Jaume Balaguero’s slow-burning chiller Sleep Tight played to sterling reviews at FrightFest last year and to celebrate its release this week in UK cinemas we took some time out with actor Luis Tosar.

It is Tosar’s powerful performance which gives Sleep Tight much of its impact and we spoke about the creation of the character and the chaos which unspools as the film goes on.

Please note that there are spoilers for Sleep Tight here, but it’s a good interview so best to go and watch the film as soon as possible, ok?

 

The central image of a man hiding beneath the bed evokes a primal response, do you think image is key to understanding the madness of César?
Imagery is important but I believe it is important for the whole film, rather than just understanding Cesar. The ideas featured in the film are in everyone’s subconscious I feel, especially those in the western world who have experienced in some way or another stories about monsters under the bed, someone close to them wanting them harm – this inborn fear is very important for the film.

Like other films directed by Jaume Balagueró fear is generated by placing chaos in a normally controlled environment – would you agree this is the essence of a good horror film?
I don’t believe that it’s the chaos that’s driving the horror in this film, it’s the fact that you have this normal situation where something happens, it could be a really small thing, in this case cockroaches, and this causes the victim to eventually lose control.

Unlike many horror films good does not ultimately triumph over evil – when the film ends the monster is still out there – was this an important element of the overall film for you?
Having evil triumph at the end is a good thing in this film, and generally a good thing to have in films such as this one. It’s not a happy ending and that leaves the audience thinking about the film days and weeks afterwards because it has unsettled their usual state. There was an alternative ending, which was filmed but never edited, in which Cesar committed suicide, but the director felt that it was better if he continued doing what he was doing, and in a way it is a happy ending for Cesar!

How important was it that the audience empathise with the character of César in the film?
Everything. It was the be all and end all, the entire point of the film, because they wanted the viewers to follow Cesar and then, when he turns, wonder where he’s taken them? As an actor it is was very interesting to explore that dark side and see where I could go with it. The challenge lay in how I could get the viewers to go to that place with me, and not only to get them to trust Cesar to take them there, but once there make them feel that this wasn’t where they thought they were going, to evoke betrayal, and to get them to realize that it wasn’t actually that hard to arrive at a place of complete terror.

Your performance is key and you triumph in making César far more realised as a character than a generic horror villain – how did you work with Balagueró to create this man?
The main idea was to play with his sense of humour, there was an irony there and a sort of craziness to the entire situation. It wasn’t so much the psychological work that we had to work on; it was the different parts of Cesar’s puzzle and ensuring we moved them in the same way that Cesar would have moved them and playing these different moves slowly. We created the character in the same way you would play a chess game, very calculated and slow to build up the tension surrounding him. We had a great time, it was a lot of fun creating Cesar with the director despite the horrifying story.

Finally the death scene in the bath was a terrifying scene to watch – but which was the most difficult scene to shoot?
My most difficult scene was the one before the terrifying bath scene where Cesar is intoxicated with chloroform. The difficult aspect was that there were two simultaneous things going on in the scene, the present action and the suspense that he may be caught, so it was just that so much was going on at once which I felt most difficult to portray.