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I just finished watching this movie less that 20 minutes ago at the start of this review, it's 12:51 am here. And that usually never happens. When it happens it's usually one of two extremes, either the movie was fucking great or it was fucking awful. I don't remember the last time I wrote a review right after having finished the movie, but it's been a while. Look, rape is one of the worst things that can happen to a woman. Obviously rape is not a thing that happens to just women, but if you were to compile a percentage of it, the vast majority of rape victims would have to be women. It's a fucking terrible thing and it pisses me off that we're at a point, with the morons of the alt-right, where it's sort of normalized and passed off as something that's not as bad as it actually is. Either that or people blame the victim for X or Y reason, which is a ridiculous notion. Either way, the subject of rape is something that's really fucking sensitive to explore in a media such as films. They have to walk a fine line to avoid being seen as exploitative or tasteless. So, given the fact that I'm writing this review shortly after having seen the film, that should tell you the fact that I think this movie is really exploitative when it comes to its portrayal of rape. The filmmakers basically use the rape scenes in the film to give in to their worst dramatic tendencies. And they do so because they think they can get away with it. They're like 'it's rape, so people at least will be more understanding when we use the melodramatics'. And I don't wanna say that they're right about that, because they're not, but there's something to that in theory. I think you could get away with melodrama if what happened actually justifies that melodrama. And one of the few things on this world that could justify that melodrama is, indeed, rape. That doesn't mean it's good storytelling or anything of the sort, just that they can be far more manipulative. But there comes a point in the movie, after the initial rape, where it's like 'Ok, enough. Move on to something else'. The movie, after the initial rape, is weeping session after weeping session after weeping session. It's so over-the-top. And I'm not trying to dismiss the feelings of women who have actually suffered through this horrible act, that's not my intention in the slightest. But this is as it relates to telling a story. If you took out a lot of the unnecessary weeping in this film, you'd have like a 55-minute flick. There's this one scene, after the lead's daughter kills herself, where she discovers a video that actually showed that her daughter was raped, in fact, a second time. She's understandably distraught, as she just thought it happened once, but then she starts screaming and weeping. To the point where it's just absolutely awful overacting. This might actually be the worst scene in the entire movie, the one that's supposed to make you feel the most for this character. The overacting did not help in the slightest. There's nothing subtle about it and it's honestly annoying. Particularly when the entire film is this same dreary, bleak experience. And I know you can't exactly draw happiness from this subject matter. But, there was a movie I saw that dealt with the rape of a 6-year-old girl, another South Korean movie called Hope. This film dealt with the consequences of a mother and father having to rebuild their little girl's entire life from scratch and her father's attempts to get his daughter to trust him again. The rape in that film was awful, as it should have been portrayed, but the movie also managed to find some beauty in that story, with the father slowly regaining his daughter's trust. It actually worked and they did so without exploiting the characters or their situations to manipulate your emotions. This movie doesn't do that. It's all about making you as awful as possible through manipulating scenes to show the absolute worst of humanity in its most crass form possible. They don't build actual characters in this movie, just plot points. Which is as about as insensitive as it gets, the daughter is really just a plot point. That's fucked up. And it doesn't even work as a revenge movie either, because the deaths the rapists suffer pale in comparison to what they should have actually been put through. Maybe this is the Lady Vengeance in me, but it should have been something far more violent or gruesome. I suppose, if they did that, they couldn't do the angle where it was just a mother who lost it due to a legal system that protects the criminals and not the victims, but it would have been better if they made the mother's vengeance more gruesome. At least it would have offered something better than just terrible melodrama. And the sad thing about all of this is the fact that the movie does, indeed, want to highlight a legal system that is flawed. They want to show that this system of protecting minors (teens) who commit sexual assault only ensures that they'll do it again, since they don't actually face any legitimate consequences for their actions. They even have stats to back it up and it's a legitimate thing in South Korea. I just wish they would have had a better movie to highlight their point, because this movie is just bad on all levels. I can't, legitimately, think of one thing that I liked about it. It's just poorly executed, tasteless, manipulative and poorly acted. And the last one really pains me, because South Korea has some incredibly talented actors and I'm sure some of them are even in this movie, but you'd never know it by the way this movie utilized them. A bad movie. I cannot give this a recommendation at all. There's nothing that amounts to quality here, so just stay away from this.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
An interesting movie with very good performances by the actresses playing the mother and daughter. I was hoping for a revenge movie where the bad guys are given a taste of their own medicine i.e. humiliation, pain, suffering culminating in slow painful deaths but this film wanted to make a statement about how lenient the legal system is on juvenile rapists/sociopaths which it did very well.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This movie made me black out-that's how powerful it is. It is an extremely sad film. 4 stars for the acting. I didn't like the ending but it was a very intense movie overall.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I was looking for a great Korean revenge flick and ended up with this wannabe instead!
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
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