Audience Member
I still feel dampness and sticky of blood and sewage. Ewwww
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
jesse o
Outside of some major stupidity in the third act, this ends up being a fairly decent South Korean thriller. Though the stupidity does end up holding it back quite a bit. And not to mention the fact that it gives in to every Korean drama trope at the end with it being attempting to emotionally manipulate. But we'll get to that later. Starting with the description, since this film does not have one. Basically, this serial killer kidnaps this woman's sister, who happens to be a deaf-mute, and takes her to his hideout/lair which is down this manhole. There's also another girl that's kidnapped and the movie follows her father trying to find her and, eventually, at the end, coming across with the woman and her sister. By and large, like I mentioned, the movie is decent, but it doesn't really cover anything new as it relates to themes or style. The setting is fairly different, I don't wanna say that I haven't seen it done before (Mimic), but you don't see it often, so it makes for a fairly solid setting with its maze-like setting. Though this, admittedly, leads to more stupid moments in that the villain, seemingly can appear anywhere at any time, even if it seems like he's on the opposite side of his lair. I suppose they're using the confusion of the sewers to sell that he could appear anywhere, since he knows all the locations and where he needs to go. But it strains credulity when he does it for 100 times in the movie. That's obviously an exaggerated number, but he does it quite a lot and it's kinda unbelievable in execution. I realize that this movie isn't meant to be a realistic portrayal of this same type of situation, like who has ever gone through this anyway, but at least keep things believable within your own context. Which brings me to the stupidest aspect of the movie. The father of the girl, who ended up being murdered, finally finds the serial killer and they start having this fight, the father has this gun, that he took from this cop (who's literally the most useless cop in the history of film), and the fight eventually leads them to burst this gas pipe. The father then shoots in the serial killer's direction and, naturally, since there was gas coming from the pipe, it causes a major explosion that reaches the woman and her sister. It seems like they finally have a free road to escape from this hell. But nope, it turns out that the serial killer, despite being in right in the epicenter of the explosion, came out of it pretty unscathed. Nothing happened to him, all he had was some injuries from his fight with the girl's father. Oh and the girl's father survives too, this is revealed much later in the film at a crucial moment. Neither the father nor the villain come out of the explosion with any visible injuries. It was really fucking stupid and it took down the movie quite a bit, I actually downgraded it from 2.5 to 2 stars because of it. And, of course, this film would not be complete without a character loudly weeping at one of the more tragic moments of the film. It's even more perplexing when the character doing that loud weeping is the only character that doesn't speak. I realize that may come across as insensitive, and I don't really mean it that way. It's more the idea behind it and the execution of it. I think they did it because they felt that if the person who can't speak is the one loudly weeping, then it would make the moment more emotionally resonant. It doesn't, again, it feels very manipulative and the embrace the deaf-mute girl and the other girl's father share feels very forceful and not particularly convincing. And it's not that the girl who plays the deaf-mute character is bad, she's actually quite good, but it's just the manipulation behind it that kills it for me. The acting from everyone involved is fairly solid, though there's no one who really stands out. So, yea, this was decent, until the stupidity got in the way. It's a major drawback to the film and it's, honestly, infuriating in parts. I can't really recommend it because of that. It is what it is, but this isn't really that bad of a movie, it's just its flaws get in the way more often than they should. So I can't, in good conscience, recommend this.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
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