2024

   The Korean film industry remained in the grip of its struggles in early 2024, but at least there were a few positive developments at the box-office to point to. People in the industry had been heartened by the runaway popular success of 12.12: The Day in late 2023, but they weren't sure if it marked a broader resurgence of interest in moviegoing, or simply a one-off success. The fact that occult movie Exhuma soared past 11 million admissions at the start of 2024 was exciting in itself, and also provided grounds for a bit of optimism.

On the festival circuit, director Hong Sangsoo won yet another Silver Bear from the Berlin International Film Festival, picking up the Grand Jury Prize (the festival's second highest honor) for A Traveler's Needs starring Isabelle Huppert. In addition, Kim Hye-young's independent feature It's Okay! won a Crystal Bear for Best Film in the Generation Kplus section. Exhuma and The Roundup: Punishment also premiered in Berlin to strong reviews. However the good vibes at Berlin would not carry over to Cannes, as the only Korean film to be invited to the main sections was director Ryoo Seung-wan's I, the Executioner (a sequel to his 2014 film Veteran), invited to the Midnight Section.

At the time of this writing it's not clear which films might emerge to be the most talked-about releases of 2024, but there's cautious hope that this year will at least leave the pandemic slump a little bit further behind.  (Written on April 17)

     Reviewed below:     Citizen of a Kind (Jan 24)  -  Exhuma (Feb 22)  -  The Roundup: Punishment (Apr 24)  -  Doombung (BiFan review)  -  The Shrine (BiFan review)  -  The Tenants (BiFan review)  -  You Will Die in 6 Hours (Oct 16)

    Citizen of a Kind

Single mother Deok-hee's life has fallen apart even before the opening credits, a devastating fire having ruined her laundry shop. After failing to secure a loan to rebuild her business, she is relieved when a representative from the bank calls to tell her about a special, limited-time only loan offer. Rushing to meet the loan's conditions, which involve transferring the rest of her savings into a new account, she just barely completes the process on her phone before the offer expires. However when she shows up in person at the bank, nobody knows anything about this supposed loan. With rising panic, Deok-hee realizes that she has been the victim of a voice phishing scam.

Embarrassed, desperate and completely broke, she goes to the police, but they say there is nothing they can do. Her back to the wall, she is just barely managing to survive when her phone rings, and she hears the familiar voice of the man who scammed her. But this time his manner is completely different. Begging for her help, he says that he has been abducted in China by a Korean gang, and forced to make calls for their voice phishing operation. He says he will try to pass along information about the business, and he asks her to report it to the police.

Adapted from a real-life incident that took place in 2016, Citizen of a Kind is in some ways a classic David vs. Goliath story of a resouceful and utterly determined woman who refuses to back down. The very talented actress Ra Mi-ran - who has often been pigeonholed into comedy roles, even though she has tremendous range - communicates Deok-hee's desperation, but also makes you believe in her strength. As the film progresses, her performance pulls you ever more deeply into the story. At first, she is primarily focused just on getting back the 30 million won (~US$25,000) that she lost, but then her increasing determination to get the entire voice phishing operation shut down turns her into a kind of avenging hero.

Meanwhile the film also shifts to the perspective of the caller Jae-min (Gong Myoung), a young man who finds himself trapped in a hellish kind of prison. As he places ever more secret, highly risky calls to Deok-hee to relay information, an unusual sort of bond develops between these two desperate people.

Writer/director Park Young-ju (who debuted with the 2018 independent feature Second Life) has done a tremendous job in bringing this story to the screen. She has taken liberties with the facts of the true-life incident, adding an entire act in which Deok-hee travels with several close friends to Qingdao, China to personally search for the criminals' base of operations (this did not happen in real life). But personally I'm quite glad that she added these scenes -- this is not a documentary, after all -- as these are some of the most vibrant and suspenseful sequences in the movie. The cameraderie and chaotic energy of Deok-hee's group of friends (played by some outstanding actors such as Yeom Hye-ran and Jang Yoon-ju) bring these scenes to life, and Director Park has a real talent for harnessing that energy and using it to drive the story forward.

Most often, films tend to celebrate heroes who are naturally gifted or highly skilled in some way. But there's something inspiring about a screen hero like Deok-hee who has been given no advantages in life, and is casually disregarded by others, yet who manages to push ahead regardless. For all of the dark places that Citizen of a Kind takes us in the course of its story, it ends up as one of the feel-good stories of the year, for all the right reasons.      (Darcy Paquet)

    Exhuma

Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are modern-day shamans particularly skilled in the arts of exorcism. We first see them on a flight to Los Angeles, where a wealthy Korean-American businessman has summoned them in regard to his infant child, who appears to be under the influence of something sinister. Not all of the family is happy to see the pair arrive, but Hwa-rim soon realizes that this affliction affects other members of the family as well. She suspects a "grave's call" - namely, a dead ancestor who, for whatever reason, is disturbed and unhappy in his grave.

This will require an exhumation and reburial, which means she will need the help of two old colleagues, feng shui expert Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) and undertaker Young-geun (Yoo Hai-jin). The two are excited at the prospect of a large paycheck, but their anticipation shifts to unease when they actually visit the grave site, which lies just below the border with North Korea. Sensing something evil and dangerous about the grave and the body buried inside, Kim reverses course and refuses to go ahead with the exhumation.

Director Jang Jae-hyun has charted a clear path for himself in the Korean film industry, directing three films in the occult genre and finding success with each one. His debut The Priests was a surprise hit during its release in 2015, selling over 5 million tickets and helping to launch the career of future Parasite star Park So-dam. His sophomore effort Svaha: The Sixth Finger starring Lee Jung-jae was also well reviewed and popular, but with Exhuma he has moved into another statosphere, remaining atop the box office for close to two months and amassing over 11 million admissions. Genre films of this type do have an audience in Korea, but the performance of Exhuma was in many ways unprecedented.

For sure, great casting was a part of the film's appeal. The veteran presence and aura of Choi Min-sik gives depth to the character of the feng shui expert, and forms a nice contrast with the youthful, powerful energy of Kim Go-eun who is terrific as the shaman. The always excellent Yoo Hai-jin and the up-and-coming star Lee Do-hyun round out this appealing quartet, who would be great fun to watch onscreen even if there were no spirits to appease or curses to break.

As for the plot itself, director Jang adopts an unusual structure for his narrative, dividing it neatly into two parts. The first half plays out more like a conventional genre film, but at the film's midpoint the plot literally descends down another layer, opening up a new realm for the film to explore. Without giving too much away, we can say that the film's symbolism expands from this point on, and the weight of history and colonization begin to make themselves felt.

Some viewers have taken issue with the film's two halves, and the threads of logic that hold them together. But Exhuma leaves its viewers with much to think and talk about, as well as some unforgettable imagery. Without a jump scare in sight, the film creeps out its audience through the accumulation of chilling, realistic details and the occasional visual flourish. The story's ultimate message may be seen as rather downbeat, but Exhuma's success has provided a much-needed injection of hope to the struggling Korean film industry.      (Darcy Paquet)

    The Roundup: Punishment

In the past few years, the big fists of Detective Ma Seok-do have become one of the most reliable box office draws in Korean cinema. With The Roundup franchise now reaching its fourth iteration (after 2017's The Outlaws, 2022's The Roundup, and 2023's The Roundup: No Way Out), actor/producer Don Lee -- aka Ma Dong-seok -- has returned with another highly entertaining stroll through the world of crimefighting. He doesn't show any sign of slowing down, either -- apparently, four more sequels are already in development.

There are some things audiences can always expect in a Roundup movie. The story will be based very loosely on a real-life crime case, though it won't weigh things down by sticking to the facts. Detective Ma will crack a few groan-inducing dad jokes, and get confused if anyone hands him a piece of new technology. The bad guys will be truly despicable, and will cause much suffering to decent, ordinary people. Then sooner or later, they will look up and Detective Ma will be standing in front of them, and he will make them pay.

In The Roundup: Punishment, the crime is online gambling. We are introduced early on to Baek (Kim Moo-yul), who is a rising star in the online gambling scene, thanks mostly to his tactic of physically attacking and laying waste to his competitors. Detective Ma's team Metro Investigations first learns of this lucrative business - which is located offshore, in the Philippines - when a young computer programmer is killed trying to escape Baek's particular brand of forced labor.

But Baek's not the only bad guy in this racket. Sitting atop the business is the super-rich, so-called "genius" tech entrepreneur Chang (Lee Dong-hwi), who has already raked in millions, and is now looking to launch his own rigged cyptocurrency that will make him even richer. Obsessed with his own self-worth, he has little time for other people's needs or opinions (or respect for their lives), which inevitably leads to tension with the ambitious Baek. Which of these two is the worse criminal may depend on one's perspective, but both more than deserve what's coming to them.

The Roundup: Punishment is directed by Heo Myeong-haeng, who has years of experience as a stunt coordinator (the list of directors he has worked with include Ryoo Seung-wan, Bong Joon Ho, Kim Jee-woon, Choi Dong-hoon, Na Hong-jin, Yoon Jong-bin, Yeon Sang-ho, and many more), but is just now stepping behind the camera. He also directed the recent Netflix feature Badland Hunters, but it's with this Roundup film that he is drawing particular praise, for its streamlined storytelling, energetic pacing and impactful, satisfying fight scenes. There's a particular rhythm to a Don Lee action scene, with the frenetic energy of the bad guy interspersed with the heavy, bone-crunching thunk of Detective Ma's fist. Director Heo balances this perfectly, delivering what may well be the most dynamic and entertaining Roundup film yet.      (Darcy Paquet)

    Doombung: The Puddle

*This review is based on a print submitted for screening at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. It may be different from a theatrical release version.

Doombung: The Puddle, one of the new South Korean horror films showcased at the 28tth Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, is a regional production, partly financed through the Northern Chungcheong Province Contents Development Support Initiative, that specifically draws upon a legend from Yeongdong, Northern Chungcheong Province. Doombung (or "dumbeong," read doom-buhng) is a local dialect for a pond or a swamp. Not surprisingly, the three-part portmanteau film takes place around the said body of murky water, from whence sinister supernatural forces exert their influence on the hapless humans dumb enough to venture into their domain.

Written and directed by Lee Dong-ju, this Channel-D/6ixstreet co-production is a modestly budgeted horror outing that attempts to but does not quite succeed in getting a boost from its localized setting. The film, competently crafted by DP An Gyeom-seo (who has an impressively long credit list among the low-budget digital cinema) and LD Choi Yong-hwan, does not look bad at all and is for the most part able to capture certain miasma-drenched, decaying qualities of the wetland environment. The problem, as is usual with the films like this, is its pedestrian screenplay.

The first episode, "The Gremlin Wavelength," starts off as if it will offer a contemporary take on the real-life legend of doombung, which involves a sudden appearance (and an equally sudden disappearance) of a large school of fish in a pond. A straightforward rendering of this legend in my view might have served as an effectively creepy and mysterious framing device or a stand-alone episode. Instead, this vignette unspools an unimaginative tale of a bad-tempered angler (Lee Jong-yun, the online series Big Bet a.k.a. Casino) who accidently kills a punk fishing enthusiast and is in turn haunted by the dead guy's radio. The story has little to distinguish itself in any way, including the denouement that resolves absolutely nothing.

To my mild surprise, the second episode "The Electronic Brain," which on paper reads like a cringe-inducingly slapdash take on a "haunted computer" idea done to death in '80s and '90s Hollywood, turned out to be the best segment. The key is that the eponymous AI program that seduces Hyuk-soo (Yoon Gyeong-ho, The Techniques of Fighting, actually pretty good in this role) into selling his soul to it, so to speak, is deliberately designed to appear downright primitive. Obviously lacking in budget to create a slick CGI-rendered cyber-scape, the filmmakers use the groaningly archaic design of the human-AI interface to their advantage, rendering the monotone-voiced Electronic Brain of the title both unexpectedly droll and quietly menacing. Hyuk-soo is an annoying, self-centered twit but Yoon Gyeong-ho manages to infuse him with pathos and convincingly essays his escalating feeling of desperation. Moreover, the depiction of Hyuk-soo's dependency on the AI is oddly realistic, such as the protracted bitcoin mining process that the latter employs to entice the boy, no different in substance from getting him hooked on heroin. The biggest liability of the segment is that the premise and execution of the story has little to do with the pond. Director Lee opts to end the story with a revelation of (at least a part) of the "real body" of the Electronic Brain snaking its way into the muddy depth of the pond, and it is a letdown, displaying a disappointing deficiency of visual imagination.

Unfortunately, the third and final segment, "Life Water," is the lamest of the three. Yun-joo, a graduate student seeking to analyze the quality of water in the pond (Choi Ye-eun) discovers that the liquid has powers to repair and rejuvenate human tissue. Tired and plodding, utterly lacking in innovation of any kind, this episode is completely predictable and brings the whole movie to what I assume was intended as an expansive, fantastic ending, that in execution is more like a throwaway sequence in a second-rate J-horror retread.

Doombung is not a classy or powerful horror film in any way you look at it, but personally I found its Northern Chungcheong Province regional flavor as well as strangely sympathetic and culturally authentic touches of the "Electronic Brain" going some distance in compensating for the tedium induced by the first and third stories. I think it would have been far more effective if director Lee had focused his resources on expanding and refining the superior second episode, taking care to present something truly bizarre design- or conception-wise (it surely did not have to be high-quality in terms of special effects) at the core of the supernatural shenanigans, whether such a being originated from the pond or not.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

    The Shrine

*This review is based on a print submitted for screening at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. It may be different from a theatrical release version.

A group of Korean art and media studies students are visiting a mountainous village near Kobe, Japan, working on a joint Korea-Japan NGO project with their Japanese equivalents to rehabilitate old towns and villages suffering from population depletion and economic downturn. They are supported by a Korean Protestant minister Lee (Ko Yoon-joon) married to a Japanese wife and settled in the area. When the Japanese and Korean students visit an abandoned shrine and uncover a head of a stone statue, they unwittingly unleash a vicious supernatural being that massacres them and seemingly kidnaps Yu-mi's sister. Unable to get much help from the police, Yu-mi (Kong Seong-ha, First Child, The Gangaster, the Cop, the Devil) turns to her old acquaintance from art school, Myung-jin (Kim Jae-joong of the veteran K-pop group TVXQ and JYJ), who now makes a living as a shaman. Myung-jin's psychic powers are real, but he does not realize that the evil that confronts him knows more about him than what he is willing to admit, especially to Yu-mi, for whom he used to carry a torch.

The Shrine, directed by Kumakiri Kazuyoshi, who had debuted with a micro-budget, despair-inducing political thriller Kichiku in 1998 and subsequently made films in a variety of genres, including My Man (2014), #Manhole (2023) and the award-winning Yoko (2023), from a screenplay by Namiko So and Choi Deuk-ryoung, is basically a Korean film set in Japan, with only a few supporting characters played by Japanese actors and key technical staff recruited from Korea. Kumakiri stated that he was attracted to the project because he wanted to make a bona fide "occult film," by which I assume he means something on the order of The Exorcist or Evil Dead, and he proves his point by keeping his film fast-moving and aggressively gory. Even though a Shinto shrine is possibly an uneasy topic for the Korean viewers, taught in schools that the forced Shinto shrine worship was one of the signature evil practices of the Japanese colonizers (see Exhuma for a popular current cinematic iteration of this view), Kumakiri and the writers tactfully evade this issue by decoupling this film's demon from Japanese religious traditions. The decrepit shrine, eerie and foreboding as it looks, is in the end merely a physical setting for supernatural possession and gory disfigurement of the young cast members.

As an Asian supernatural horror film goes, The Shrine is not half bad. For one, it does not waste a large chunk of the footage providing boring expositions about the seemingly cursed shrine or the backstory of the demon. Sun Sang-jae's (Detective Mr. Gong, Toxic Parent) widescreen cinematography is plenty atmospheric. Lee Sang-hoon's music is appropriately creepy and mysterious. Korean actors, including Song Woo-joo as the poor photography student Ji-eun saddled with a blowfly-in-the-eye-socket problem, provide adequate supporting works. Actually, the film's most sympathetic and interesting character turns out to be Minister Lee, played by the musical actor Ko Yoon-joon (who had once played Riff-Raff in a Korean stage production of Rocky Horror Picture Show). Ko delivers the film's best performance as a man of faith devastated by loss of a loved one and embracing the cruel demands of a false deity, possibly knowing that such an act will ultimately not be rewarded.

The Shrine's two major weaknesses in my view are Kim Jae-joong's performance as Myung-jin and the glaring lack of chemistry between him and Kong Seong-ha's Yu-mi. Either Kumakiri had not quite figured out how to direct Jae-jung in Korean language, or the conception of the character was not conveyed well to the former idol singer. Throughout the film Myung-jin behaves as if he is annoyed or distracted, when he should be contemplative or feigning calmness while struggling with inner turmoil. As performed by Jae-joong, his morose (and sometimes quite flippant) shaman is not a protagonist one could root for (unless, I guess, he or she is a die-hard fan of TVXQ or JYJ). Having said that, the arc of the character— reminiscent of Jason Miller's Father Karras from The Exorcist, deeply flawed, morally uncertain and wracked with guilt —, including his "twisted" but logical ultimate fate, makes a lot of sense as written in the screenplay, so I am reluctant to entirely dismiss Myung-jin as a cipher. Nonetheless, I cannot help but wish that the character was given to a talented actor like a younger Shin Ha-gyun or Park Hae-il.

The Shrine is a robust, red-blooded supernatural thriller, above par as far as the usual level of quality one expects from a contemporary J-horror, but ultimately cannot hold a candle to its most obvious inspiration, i. e. Evil Dead films, including the Fede Alvarez remake (2013) and its most recent iteration, Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise (2023). As a Korea-Japan co-production, or more precisely a Korean production taking advantage of Japanese resources and market, however, it deserves some kudos for moving in the right direction.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

    The Tenants

*This review is based on a print submitted for screening at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. It may be different from a theatrical release version.

A Korean city in a near future, decrepit, messy, with its air perpetually polluted and infrastructure crumbling, its subway full of unhappy, masked commuters. Kim Sin-dong (Kim Dae-geon) is a harried young office worker in an artificial meat product company called Happy Meat. While shooting the breeze with his cynical friend Mr. Dork (Sin Young-gyu), he hits upon the idea of leasing a room in his already cramped apartment. He is taken aback when his half-hearted notice for a partial lease is immediately and enthusiastically answered by a newlywed couple, a black-clad smooth-talker (Heo Dong-won, The Roundup series, also memorable in the TV drama The Glory) with a feathered fedora and his perpetually grinning, doll-like bride (Park So-hyun). Creeped out by the couple, who insist on setting up their love nest in the bathroom (!?)— which means that Sin-dong has to line up with a bunch of office workers in a public toilet every morning— and lack a sense of personal boundaries, he is relieved when they decide to move out. However, Sin-dong discovers to his horror that the weird tenants had leased the attic space in the ceiling of the bathroom (!??) to yet another tenant. Without this tenant-of-tenant's consent, he cannot legally terminate the lease. He might even lose his chance of getting promoted and moving out of the dreadful city. Panicking, Sin-dong decides to directly negotiate with the ceiling-dwelling tenant-of-tenant, allegedly a young woman in 20s.

The sophomore feature written and directed by Yoon Eun-kyung, who had debuted with a robust haunted-house horror Hotel Lake (a.k.a. Lingering, 2022), The Tenants does come with its own share of horrific set pieces, but is at heart a surrealistic black comedy, positively Kafkaesque in its examination of the frustrations and absurdities in the life of a young Korean white-collar worker. Indeed, the film's non-superfluous reference to Kafka is indicative of both the film's sardonic sense of humor and its surprisingly unnerving take on the suffocating cul-de-sac that is a young contemporary Korean's "productive" modern life.

Yoon's screenplay, based on Jang Eun-ho's short story "The Ceiling Tax," takes its time to introduce Sin-dong's dreary work environment and life-force-sapping social trappings, yet never loses its focus on the subjective anxieties and aspirations of its protagonist. Yoon displays a welcome sense of restraint in articulating her often bizarre characters. The fedora-wearing bridegroom is one of the best roles yet for Heo Dong-won, typecast as a secondary villain in bigger-budget productions, whose bland smirk and ever-so-reasonable elocutions are simultaneously reassuring and intimidating. Other funny yet off-kilter characterizations abound: Sin-dong's landlord, for instance, is an elementary-school-age boy (Ham Sang-hyuk) whose bright insistence on "fair and common-sensical" treatment of his tenants irritates the former to no end. Overall, The Tenants is an excellent example of how to tell a story by placing essentially rational characters in an increasingly absurd (and ultimately a completely berserk-insane) situation, rather than attempting to stretch a thin narrative by making the characters excessively colorful or obviously "crazy."

The film's look is also interestingly minimalist. Yoon, DP Park Jun-yong and LD An Tae-gyu render the street corridors, concrete facades and office cubicles subtly alien and ashen by filming them in a black and white widescreen format. This outlook is occasionally punctuated by rather effective touches of hyper-Expressionist horror reminiscent of silent cinema, especially Sin-dong's increasingly terrifying nightmares and hallucinations.

I wish The Tenants' resolution was a bit less predictable, although it is a supremely logical one given the film's premise and thematic trajectory (as soon as the government subsidizing of certain sinister pharmacological substances for the ceiling tenants is disclosed, we can guess where the narrative might be heading) and neatly explains the reasons for weird behaviors and looks of the tenant couple. The film might also disappoint those viewers who had expected to watch a more sanguine mélange of dystopian SF and horror. It is much too contemplative for that, even though Yoon Eun-kyung is certainly no slouch at full-tilt scaremongering. Yet, in the end, The Tenants becomes almost unexpectedly moving, compelling the viewer to feel genuine sympathy for its hapless protagonist. It is a mordantly witty parable that smartly manipulates the conventions and expectations of a horror film, to wryly but compassionately comment on the predicament of younger-generation Korean urbanites like Sin-dong, and another solid output from Yoon, one of the Korean genre directors to watch out for.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

    You Will Die in 6 Hours

*This review is based on a print submitted for screening at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival. It may be different from a theatrical release version.

Jung-yoon (Park Ju-hyun, Netflix's Seoul Vibe and Extracurricular) is a young Seoulite shuffling three jobs and barely making her ends meet. One day, she runs into Jun-woo (the K-pop group NCT 127's Jaehyun, a.k.a. Jeong Yun-o) on a crosswalk, who claims to have seen her death, to be precise her murder in the hands of a serial killer, destined to take place in six hours. Initially skeptical, Jung-yoon decides to half-heartedly trust the boy, not knowing that he was a boyfriend of a previous victim and is now a prime suspect for her murder. The narrative takes another turn when Jung-yoon's past as an employee in a paid dating service, subsequently busted for exploiting underage girls, emerges as a clue to the identity of the killer. Detective Yu (Kwak Si-yang, The Witness, The Battle of Jangsari), responsible for busting the dating club case and aware of Jung-yoon's connection to it, is convinced that Jun-woo is a psychotic killer bumping off the girls who had worked there. Is Jun-woo a true psychic? Will his premonition come true and the police will not be able to stop the murder of Jung-yoon from taking place?

You Will Die in 6 Hours, a Shochiku co-production and directed by Lee Yun-seok, a graduate of the Japan Institute of the Moving Image, is based on the mystery writer Takano Kazuaki's 2007 serial novel. The Japanese influence mainly shows up in its verbose, quasi-literary dialogue through which characters make position speeches and melancholy observations about the meaning (-lessness) of life, as well as its languid, blandly "romantic" ambience. To put it bluntly, the film generates little suspense. It will be particularly disappointing for those expecting a classic Hollywood-style hardboiled thriller. Moreover, Jung-yoon's acceptance of Jun-woo's farfetched story of psychic ability might strike some viewers as weirdly gullible. Director Lee and screenwriter Chung Young (a librettist who has had a hand in adapting Midnight Dinner and other Japanese-language literary sources into musicals) attempt to play with the viewer's expectations about Jun-woo's true motivation and veracity of his psychic ability, but these machinations are neither clever nor flamboyant enough to sustain the viewer interest.

The main strength of the film is its attractive cast, spearheaded by Park Ju-hyun. Park, slightly resembling Dahyun from Twice (she apparently was almost recruited by SM Entertainment as a K-pop trainee), does a commendable job of keeping her character grounded and real, persuasively conveying Jung-yoon's resilience, frustration and crippling sense of isolation. The character's expressions are carefully calibrated by Park so as not to drive her acting into a whirlpool of melodramatic mugging. On the evidence of this film, Jaehyun is not (yet) a riveting actor, but his subdued, almost passive, approach to the enigmatic Jun-woo dovetails well with Park's subtle and contained acting style. In the scenes with Jaehyun and Kwak Si-yang, she is clearly the dominant figure and her performance provides the necessary emotional anchor for the (predictable) plot developments.

Like The Tenants, but taking a completely different approach from that dark satire, You Will Die in 6 Hours is at its core about the frustrations of a hard-working MZ-generation Korean, whose bristling responses to the preachy entitlements of their elders receive some good workout in Jung-yoon's interaction with authority figures, including the cops. She is an attractive figure to generate viewer sympathies in this regard, although there is no real palpable onscreen chemistry between Park and Jaehyun (they certainly look pretty together, no doubt about it).

Unfortunately, the film is a dud as a mystery, with its supernatural elements almost treated as an afterthought. While its heart is in the right place, it reminds one of an ultimately forgettable, low-octane "romantic thriller" from '80s or '90s Japan, say, something Kadokawa Pictures would have half-heartedly financed to fulfill an obligation to one of their "idol" stars. In that sense, its best chance to fame is probably to serve as a showcase vehicle for Park Ju-hyun, who certainly has got what it takes to become a bigger star in the future.      (Kyu Hyun  Kim)

Koreanfilm.org, last updated August 14, 2024.