“Sleep Tight,” directed by Jaume Balagueró, is a chilling psychological thriller about a twisted concierge of an apartment building in Barcelona.

César (Luis Tosar), the caretaker of an apartment building, is a miserable man. Happiness eludes him. He often contemplates suicide by jumping off the top of the building but never goes through with it. Within minutes into the movie, we realize that César is a soulless, perverted sociopath.

Frustrated at his own predicament, César decides to take out his anger on the tenants who reside in the apartment. He jeopardizes the life of Veronica’s dog, one of the tenants, by feeding it a slice of pie. He angers another tenant by killing the latter’s plants by neglecting to water them. He falsely accuses the son of one of the cleaners of failing to clean the office.

However, César masks his real self by outwardly seeming to have a mild, polite, and soft-spoken demeanor whenever he encounters the residents of his apartment.

César is obsessed with Clara (Marta Etura), another tenant in the apartment, a jolly soul with an effervescent personality. He has, perhaps on more than one occasion, hidden in her apartment, waited for her to fall asleep, chloroformed her, and slept beside her until the early morning and quietly left while she slept.

Ursula, a small girl who also lives in the apartment, possibly has issues of her own. She notices César leaving Clara’s apartment and blackmails him, threatening to expose him to Clara. Ursula demands that César pay her some cash in exchange for her silence, and César obliges.

César sometimes visits his incapacitated mother, who is tethered to a set of tubes and monitors, at a hospital, and tells her about Clara. César continues to surreptitiously enter Clara’s apartment with malicious intentions.

On one occasion, he opens her mail and then callously discards it. On another, he spikes Clara’s toiletries, causing her to get a rash. Further, he makes harassing calls to Clara from a LAN line in the building. Not knowing that César is behind the calls, Clara reveals to him that the police have narrowed down the person making the calls to someone in the building by tracking down the location of the origin of the signals.

On another occasion, César causes a cockroach infestation in her apartment, as a result of which the police launch an investigation into who could be the culprit. César realizes that he is one of the main suspects in the case and implicates the son of the cleaner whom he blamed earlier for not cleaning the office.

Clara leaves the apartment to stay with her mother while it is being fumigated. A few days later when César is in the apartment, she returns with her boyfriend Marcos (Alberto San Juan).

With César hiding under the bed, the couple make love on top of it. This is one of the most disturbing scenes in the movie. The repercussions that unfold from that night will have disturbing consequences on César, Clara, and Marco. They will lead to murder and more upheaval.

Will César be able to escape the consequences of his actions? How will this end for everyone? The rest of the movie answers these questions.

Made on a modest budget and with most scenes in the movie confined to the one apartment building, a movie like this would need some unique factors to pull through and keep viewers engaged. This movie has many such factors.

While most of the cast has turned in decent performances, it is Luis Tosar who stands out with his outstanding portrayal of the calm and sickly twisted César. The second factor is the chilling plot that is backed with a good suspenseful score. Further, cinematography portrays the apartment building as dark and foreboding, accentuating the ‘chill’ element. All in all, this is another movie that thriller and mystery fans will enjoy.