Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a drama, mystery, sci-fi film from 2021, titled Deep.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
A young man wearing a doctor’s coat is standing on the rooftop of a building, half-conscious.
The people below are begging him not to jump while a police officer and others are running
through the stairs, hoping to get to him in time.
But as soon as the police officer opens the roof’s door, the man lets go and falls on
the ground.
The film suddenly moves to a class at a Medical University where the professor and principal
Nichcha is holding a class about insomnia.
She explains how the condition is usually caused by stress and anxiety and how most
cases don’t last more than a few days.
But, she also mentions rare cases of clinical insomnia which is caused by severe traumatic
events and can last up to a few months and even years.
She explains how only after 2 sleepless nights, the brain goes into complete disarray, but
over 3 sleepless nights can lead to acute confusion and delirium.
In those cases, the brain has a completely distorted perception of reality, and this
can cause visual and auditory hallucinations.
The professor tells the student how she has experienced hallucinations during her studies
when, after a few days of staying awake, she imagined the lab rabbit speaking to her.
The students laugh and the story quickly moves to Jane’s house.
Jane is a medical student who just moved in at her grandmother’s place with her little
sister, June.
She is currently experiencing insomnia and has a specific night routine.
After coming home, she obsessively checks the home’s locks, studies until 2 am, goes
to the grocery store at 3 am, and then prepares meals for her family restaurant until 7 am.
Afterward, she starts her regular day and goes to university until repeating the same
routine at night.
She thinks that by avoiding sleep, all 24 hours are used and not a second is wasted.
June is also obviously anxious and under stress, especially since she handles her little sister
and her ill grandmother.
She’s also in desperate need of money because her grandma owes 728 155 baht or $22,432 for
a mortgage.
Jane can’t handle all the stress, so she goes to professor Nichcha and tells her she
plans to drop out of med school.
Nichcha knows Jane is an excellent student and doesn’t want to lose her, so she suggests
a way to solve her financial issues.
She gives Jane a business card from Weimar Personal, a German pharmaceutical company
that is researching insomnia and pays good money to people who are test subjects.
The professor knows about Jane’s insomnia because the student was part of her research
on the same topic.
Jane is drawn in by the money so she quickly accepts the suggestion and applies to be a
test subject.
Soon after, she is accepted and goes to the company where she watches an explanatory video
about the research.
Turns out, the scientists want to harvest Qratonin – a substance that keeps us awake
and is released from the thalamus.
Qratonin can be used to treat brain dead patients and is only released when a person is awake
so Jane has to avoid sleeping for a couple of days.
The harvest process is called “Deep” and has three levels.
Subjects in the higher levels need to stay awake longer, but get more money in return.
When the video ends, the director of the facility Dr. Hans Miller enters the room and explains
how by harvesting Qratonin, he plans to revolutionize the pharmaceutical business.
He tells Jane that to participate in “Deep”, you need a microchip implant that will extract
Qratonin from the brain.
Jane agrees to start level 1 in exchange for 100,000 baht which is around $3,000.
After the doctor puts the microchip in her neck, he also adds a watch on her wrist that
will measure her heartbeat and the amount of Qratonin that is harvested.
When the amount of Qratonin reaches 100%, she must come to the facility to get her microchip
removed.
But before Jane leaves, the doctor warns her about two things.
First, because she signed an NDA, she mustn’t tell anyone about the research in order to
protect the company from competitors.
Second, she mustn’t sleep more than 60 seconds under any circumstances.
If she does, the microchip may short circuit and stop her heart.
He tells her not to worry because the watch will start to beep the moment she falls asleep
so it can wake her up in time.
Later, Jane’s at home and starts her night routine.
It seems like time goes slower because it’s 2 am and she is already bored and sleepy.
Plus, her Qratonin level is only at 39%.
She decides to check on her sleeping grandmother but finds her out of bed and laying on the
floor.
Jane gets scared but turns out, granny dropped her dentures and was looking for them under
the bed.
Jane gets relieved, laughs, and goes to give her granny a massage to calm her nerves.
Suddenly, they hear the sound of a car.
It’s her sister June who’s arriving home late and is getting a lift from a mysterious
boy.
Jane confronts her sister and asks questions about the guy suspecting that her sister is
sleeping around.
While they are fighting, Jane breaks her sister’s phone by accident so June gets even angrier
and leaves.
Day two of level one starts and Jane is eating at the university canteen when Win, one of
her colleagues, notices the watch from “Deep” and approaches her.
Win is a party animal so he’s always awake and decided to enroll in “Deep” too.
Jane warns him that they shouldn’t talk about the research because they signed an
NDA but Win then explains how other students are part of it too.
Cin, a famous beauty blogger, and Peach, an unpopular gamer who’s in love with the influencer.
Soon, the two other students join them at the table and start talking about the research.
Peach has suspicions about the company, especially since they will die if they fall asleep, but
Jane quickly dismisses them and says that they only need to stay awake to survive.
Even though they are very different people, the four of them quickly bond and add each
other on social media.
Also, Win develops feelings for Jane.
Everybody’s watch is almost full so they agree to go together at the company and get
their microchips removed.
In the meantime, everybody continues with their regular lives.
Cin starts live streaming, Jane helps at home, Win parties, and Peach plays video games and
stalks Cin online.
Barely a day passes and all of their watches are at 100% so they visit the company to get
their chips removed and go on a spending spree.
Peach upgrades his game room, Win buys an expensive watch and an aquarium, Cin goes
to a cosmetician, and Jane pays off a part of the debt.
Later, they meet at a bowling alley where they have fun.
Cin confides in them that she noticed somebody stalking her since she started “Deep”
and she suspects it’s somebody from the facility.
Nobody takes her seriously and they start debating whether to continue to level 2.
All of them need more money so they vote yes and create an online group to support each
other during the process.
They call the group “non non” because the word “non” means “no” in French
and “sleep” in Thai so the actual group’s name is “no sleep”.
As they are having fun, Jane gets up to leave because she has to take care of her grandmother,
and Win leaves Cin and Peach together because he knows the gamer likes the influencer.
Peach is extremely shy and barely speaks to Cin who’s still worried about the stalker.
Peach awkwardly tells her to watch out because there are a lot of psychos out there and because
he cares about her.
Cin notices he likes her so she pokes fun at him before leaving in a cab.
Meanwhile, Jane is studying at home when her sister arrives late, again.
But this time June gives her a new phone she bought with the money from “Deep” as a
way to apologize.
All of the students have a tougher life than we think.
While Jane is apologizing to her sister, Win enters his messy house that’s filled with
books and barely speaks a word to his father.
Cin also doesn’t have a good relationship with her family who are forcing her to be
a medical student even though she prefers to study communication.
That’s the initial reason why she was stressed and qualified for the “Deep” projects
with her insomnia.
In the morning, all the students go to the facility and continue level 2.
Dr. Hans explains how they will have to avoid sleeping longer and that the required time
is different for everybody.
He tells them that based on their previous performances, he expects their Qratonin level
to reach 100% in 5 days.
The students aren’t so sure about continuing until Hans offers them 500,000 baht which
is around $15,000.
The next thing we know, the four students are barely conscious.
Peach’s watch starts beeping as he falls asleep for a few seconds while Win is half-consciously
walking through a hallway and can’t focus his vision.
He enters a basketball court barely standing and his watch is only at 44%.
Win even starts having auditory hallucinations, imagining how one of the players whispers
“no wonder his mom killed herself”.
After imagining this, he attacks the player and punches him in the face.
Luckily, his teammates manage to calm him down and he soon becomes aware of the surroundings.
Jane is hardly keeping up too since she’s checking the locks 10 times in a row.
She is also bothered by her sister who's playing guitar so the two of them soon get into a
massive fight.
June gets suspicious about Jane’s behavior and about the way she found money to buy her
a new phone, so she demands answers.
Jane lies and tells she got a part-time job as a tutor but June doesn’t believe her.
They get into a fight and Jane leaves, but her sister finds a business card from “Deep”
on the desk.
The next morning, Jane is barely awake and is doing an autopsy on a body during class.
While cutting, she hallucinates that the person has her grandmother’s face and screams in
front of everyone.
Meanwhile, Cin is hardly walking through the University’s halls and her perception is
distorted.
She also notices how other students are wearing “Deep” watches and gets upset.
The four sleep-deprived students meet in the canteen and their watches are stuck at a low
percentage.
Even though she’s tired, Jane notices how Win’s Qratonin levels are at least 10% higher
than the rest.
She concludes his percentage is higher because he exercises and that body movement probably
affects Qratonin levels.
So the students make a plan.
They go to Peach’s house and have a party where they swim in his pool and drink sugary
sodas.
After they have loads of fun, Win has a conversation with Jane.
She admits that the only thing she does is study and take care of her grandmother while
Win only parties and drinks.
When he asks her about her parents, she gets quiet and suddenly gets flashbacks of her
parents’ murder.
Jane quickly changes the topic but they notice Peach trying to fall asleep.
Cin thinks of a creative solution so she waxes his leg hair to wake him up.
But, Win has an even better plan.
He makes cocktails with stimulant pills he stole from the faculty’s pharmacy.
Jane warns him that one of the ingredients can cause strokes but Win thinks it’s better
to risk a stroke than fall asleep and die.
They drink the cocktails and get super drunk afterward.
Cin, Win, and Peach start dancing but Jane is sitting still because she is dizzy.
Everybody gets worried because she isn’t showing any reactions when suddenly, she starts
dancing like there’s no tomorrow.
All of them have an amazing time and Jane even kisses Win, giving him a bit of false
hope.
After a while, Cin is in the bathroom washing her face when she starts hallucinating that
she has a pimple.
When she leaves the bathroom, she hears the sound of her voice coming from Peach’s room.
Inside the room, Cin sees dozens of her Instagram videos showing simultaneously on Peach’s
computer.
She also sees pictures of her hanging on the ceiling above his bed and suddenly hallucinates
a scary alter ego of her laughing in the mirror after which she immediately faints.
Her watch starts beeping and everybody enters the room, trying to wake up Cin.
However, they notice she doesn’t have a pulse and June starts giving her CPR.
While this is happening, Peach is crying and Win is yelling at him because he is a creep
and because it’s his fault that Cin is dying.
All of them desperately try to save Cin and luckily, she wakes up at the last second.
Since it was a stressful situation, all of their watches become full in an instant.
But after Cin’s near-death experience, nobody wants to continue with “Deep” so they
go to take their money and vouch to never step inside the company again.
Finally, they get their hours of sleep and continue their normal lives.
A few days later, Peach approaches Cin and tries to apologize, explaining how he only
stalked her because he liked her.
But, Cin threatens to call security and ends their friendship.
At the same time, professor Nichcha criticizes Jane because her grades dropped.
Jane says that she didn’t have time to study because of the research and Nichcha advises
her to quit “Deep”.
Jane informs her she just quit so the professor gives her a motivational speech, saying she
has to focus on studying now and she’ll have a chance to make money in the future.
Afterward, Win approaches Jane and invites her to an Ed Sheeran concert.
She tells him she’s not interested, both in the concert and in him.
Jane’s hands are already full so she’s not looking for a relationship at the moment.
After getting rejected by Jane, Win goes to a bar to drinks his sorrows away, but he can’t
get Jane’s kiss out of his head.
He also discovers that his dad threw away his mother’s old stuff.
Win gets angry and confronts his father, asking for an explanation.
His dad didn’t want them to be stuck forever with her memory.
He tells Win “out of sight, out of mind”.
But the young man gets very angry and tells his father “You can forget her on your own.
I won’t”.
Then Win tells his father a nasty truth – that he only threw away the stuff to forget how
he couldn’t save her in the first place.
Win says that if he was his father, he would have never given up and would have saved his
mother.
Meanwhile, at the university, Jane sees an ambulance vehicle carrying the body of a newly-deceased
student.
She notices a “Deep” watch on the student’s wrist and gets scared.
When she gets home, she sees another horrible picture.
Her grandmother has fallen on the floor and suffered a stroke.
She takes her granny to a hospital where June arrives, late.
Jane tells her they have to move their granny to another hospital because they can’t afford
this one.
But, June then gives her a paper bag filled with money and with Weimar’s logo on it.
Jane asks her sister to turn around and sees a chip in her neck.
They get into a fight and June leaves while Jane goes with the nurse to check on their
granny.
Afterward, Jane runs back home and sees her sister isn’t there.
She goes to Weimar and finds Dr. Hans inserting another chip into June.
Jane threatens to call the police but Hans reminds her that she signed an NDA and then
blackmails her.
If she wants to remove the chip from her sister, she must persuade her other friends to continue
with level 3.
The sisters leave the hospital and meet up with Cin, Win, and Peach, hoping to get help
from their friends.
If the three of them don’t agree then Hans won’t remove June’s chip even if she gets
to 100%.
Peach and Cin don’t like the idea and aren’t willing to risk their lives again.
Cin says it’s a bad bet because they will be risking four lives in order to save one.
But Win reminds her that Jane was the one who saved her life and that she owes her for
that.
Even though Jane starts begging, Cin leaves and Peach follows her soon after.
Win is the only one who wants to help and promises he won’t leave the sisters behind.
Later, the sisters are watching their grandmother in the hospital and open up to each other.
June apologizes and says she wasn’t thinking straight.
Jane comforts her and both sisters hold hands, wondering how they will survive level 3.
At the same time, Cin is at home doing a live feed when she starts remembering the good
times she had with the other students.
Peach is also going through old memories and starts crying, regretting how he acted with
his crush.
The next morning, Jane, June, and Win arrive at Weimar but see how Peach is already waiting
for them.
He changed his mind and decided to help the sisters after all.
Soon, Cin enters the facility too, saying how she doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone.
The four of them start level 3 together, but Jane has thought of a plan.
After they get chipped, they go to professor Nichcha who will help them during the experiment.
She places them in her father’s old abandoned ward and gives them Exerall to keep them awake.
She tells them to use the Intercom if they want more help and soon leaves them on their
own.
A few days pass and everybody is doing fine, but on the 6th-day things quickly go astray.
It all starts with Peach who starts having auditory hallucinations and hears gunshots
from the other ward.
Win is also hallucinating, seeing his dead mother coming toward him in the hallway while
Jane imagines her sister bleeding and dying so she starts reviving her.
June starts comforting her sister, persuading her that she’s alive and one by one, the
students start gaining awareness.
But in the bathroom, Cin is looking at herself in the mirror when a million pimples start
appearing on her face.
She breaks the mirror and then starts blaming Jane for her skin damage.
Cin becomes rude and starts bashing on everybody, saying Win is desperate to get Jane’s attention
and that Peach is a psychopath.
Win gets angry at Cin while Peach tries to calm things down.
Win then gets angry at him, saying how nobody wants to be friends with a sick loser.
He provokes Peach so soon they start fighting each other and nobody can calm them down.
Jane gets scared so she uses the intercom and asks the professor for help.
Nobody is answering so she exits the room and starts looking for Nichcha.
But in one of the rooms, she discovers how Nichcha has been watching them from security
cameras and tracking their progress.
Jane also finds audition papers for an actor who looks exactly like Dr.Hans.
Turns out, Nichcha hired an actor to pretend to be a doctor while she was running the whole
operation all along.
The professor finds Jane snooping so the student quickly runs away to her friends.
As she slips on the stairs and falls, Nichcha’s observing her from the top of the stairs,
slowly approaching her victim.
Jane manages to escape to the room where everybody’s fighting and starts calling the police, but
there is no signal.
Evil Nichcha then locks them in the ward and tells them she’ll remove the chips once
they reach 100 percent.
Next thing we know, Cin breaks all the cameras and tells the doctor she’s never getting
her microchips because she’s coming to kill her.
Suddenly, Win falls asleep and his alarm starts beeping.
Even though the others try to save him, he doesn’t wake up and instead dreams about
his deceased mother while approaching him takes a gun, and shoots herself.
Win’s watch gets at zero seconds, meaning he’s slept over a minute.
Everybody cries because they couldn’t save him and he died.
Nichcha gets a notification that one of the students is dead so she enters the ward to
take his body and remove the chip.
But as she is doing this, he gets up and hits her on the head.
The students tricked her.
They turned on the cameras on purpose so Win can take CCL which causes temporary cardiac
arrest.
They figures if they can’t get away, they can at least fake their death and get to the
professor’s room.
When Nichcha gets up from the floor, Jane asks her the reason behind her brutal experiment.
Then, the professor opens up a curtain and shows her old lover, Jed, who is in a comma.
It’s the same person from the beginning of the movie who jumped from the rooftop.
He was a medical student who got bad hallucinations because he was experimenting with sleep deprivation.
Nichcha was his girlfriend and has been trying to revive him with Qratonin ever since.
She explains to the students that she cares about them and that she never meant to harm
them.
Nichcha has also been harvesting Qratonin from her own body so she shows her neck wounds
to the students.
But, nobody believes that she means well so she attacks Jane and injects her with valium,
leaving her to die unconscious.
June and Win try to save her while Peach and Cin fight the professor who’s trying to
stick the needle in them as well.
Win gives Jane CPR but she isn’t waking up and remains unconscious even after a minute
passes.
Meanwhile, after a long fight, Cin bashes the professor’s head with a keyboard and
saves her stalker Peach from being injected.
But, Jane is still sleeping and June is crying over her body, hitting her sister’s heart
with a fist.
Suddenly, Jane wakes up and everybody is relieved.
Even though they never get the money for level 3, doctors remove their chips and they continue
with their normal lives which are now even better.
Win settles things with his father who promises to bring all his mother’s stuff back while
his son cries on his shoulder, Cin is still an Instagram influencer but studies communication
instead of medicine, Win and Jane are dating, and Peach quit gaming and decided to live
with his friends in the real world.
Most importantly, everybody chose to sleep like a rock rather than to sleep like the
dead, never to wake up and see the sun again.