Shut Eye
2020 · 15m · United States
Directed by Robert Gregson
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A recovering addict isolating in a rental home starts to suspect her episodes of sleep paralysis may be real.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Sleep paralysis as a gateway to genuine supernatural horror is the kind of premise everyone dismisses until someone actually commits to it—Gregson treats the blur between neurological and metaphysical with enough refusal to choose sides that it stays genuinely unsettling.
The film navigates the lineage of psychological horror and body-horror traditions with deliberate restraint, letting the formal tension between documentary-realism and surrealist incursion do the thematic work rather than reaching for easy scares.
The decision to shoot the paralysis sequences in near-total stillness while the soundscape fractures into dissonance does all the heavy lifting—it's a $0 VFX choice that turns isolation and addiction into something physically claustrophobic without a single jump cut.