BaldFerrets

If you fall asleep while watching the drama, and no eyes are opened to see it, is the drama good?

We get it, Na Hong Jin's The Wailing (2016) is great! But that does not mean replicating its structure will yield the same results. Similar to that of the infamous double ritual in The Wailing, The Frog showcases two events in separate timelines simultaneously, and uses editing to trick viewers from noticing. It is not until later where the disjointed timeline unravels and attentive viewers begin to get an idea of what had happened. However, unlike The Wailing whose tricky editing served a thematic purpose, The Frog presents no reasoning for its editing choice except to test the viewer's patience. Also "coincidentally," both productions tackle the problem of random evil. But the stark contrast of how the subject matter was handled between the two is clear once again. While The Wailing ventures on an ambitious aim of understanding the why, utilizing the director's personal wrestling of his faith as a keystone for shaping the plot, The Frog gives a muted showcase of the damages done by evil without much reflection, but to present the hackneyed observation that bystanders and strangers lack empathy. The execution between the two is akin to a gymnast gracefully landing a complex somersault and a frog leaping and falling flat on its belly. The Frog's performance is not the prettiest nor very thoughtful, but at least there was an attempt.

The series traces the timelines of two lodging owners, Sang Jun, a motel owner, and Young Ha, a guest house owner. Both are victims of collateral damage by problematic renters, Hyang Cheol, a serial killer, and Seong Ah, a murderous squatter. Their narratives unfold nonlinearly, twenty years apart. In Sang Jun's case, a serial killer randomly dismembers a body in one of the rooms, driving away business once the incident garners media attention. After a year, the motel owner goes bankrupt and is left with a broken family. Twenty years later in another remote corner of the same town, Young Ha deduces a woman has killed her stepson in the guest house. But to preserve the sanctity of his wife's final resting place and to avoid trouble involving a stranger, the pension house owner buries the truth. A year later, the same woman returns and tries to purchase the house.

Swarms of flashing lights and camera lens fill the air as media teams bombard a motel. We are at Lake Side View motel where Sang Jun frantically arrives to the scene of conflict oblivious to what has happened. A detective at the scene briefs him that one of his tenants is serial killer Ji Hyang Cheol, and the killer had dismembered a woman in one of the rooms. The devastated and terrified owner makes his way to the second floor room and uncovers the grisly truth. As if the traumatic event wasn't enough, Sang Jun soon realizes the greatest threat of Lake Side View motel wasn't the serial killer who was swiftly captured by police, but the hounding news anchors and reporters that covered the story without consideration for his circumstances.

For casual viewers, the scene of a media storm is not unordinary, but those who kept up with Korean entertainment news can link the event with the suicide of Lee Sun Kyun, a popular actor known for his unique voice. The nonstop coverage of his scandal was widespread. Naturally, the climate was ripe for rumors to proliferate among laypeople and professionals alike. It was only after his death when onlookers began to find the police, who leaked information, and the media, which relied less on the veracity but the quantity and quickness of their coverage, culpable. So, it should not color anyone surprised that a Netflix series attempts to capitalize on an infamous tragedy to function as a social commentary in the most careless and caricature-like manner in the next release cycle after his death.

There is another frantic owner: Young Ha has a good idea of what transpired inside the guest house and has the opportunity to correct an evil; he chooses not to. Instead, the bloodied crime scene is washed by his sweat, as the pension house owner ensures if Seong Ah, who cleaned the room in a hurry, left any lingering evidence, then he'll be the one to erase it. Yet, like the reporters who had ignored Sang Jun's circumstances when covering his story, the writer also forgets about Young Ha's situation when rushing to the next part of the story. Here's why:
The Frog lazily frames both business owners, Young Ha and Sang Jun, adjacently and parallel their misfortunes as the same. However, with a moment of reflection, it should be clear the pension owner's justification for not reporting the crime becomes less plausible when we consider:
I. Young Ha, whose daughter and son-in-law are willing to set up the house as a personal vacation house instead, is wealthy; Sang Jun invested his last cent into buying the motel and was penniless. In other words, Sang Jun is desperate for success, but Young Ha is.
II. Seong Ah takes the corpse with her and cleans the crime scene; Hyang Cheol did not and left the dismembered body parts on the motel bedroom. In other words, for the motel, the media directly captured the gruesome murder of the crime scene plastering the images on the front page. However, the worst that can occur for the pension house is a standard infanticide coverage without any images. In the absolute worst case scenario, if Young Ha loses customers, he can simply turn his pension house into a second vacation house. Preserving the sanctity of the home for his deceased wife is not convincing when he has already come across the truth. Is it really reasonable to avoid an investigate of a dead child in case public reception tarnishes the reputation of your deceased wife's property? Then, maybe the justification for Young Ha's inaction boils down to a selfish businessman who did not want to involve his hands in the "meager death" of a stranger's child after all.

In a distant morning, Young Ha prepares the guest house and the dinner ingredients for a scheduled gathering. Out of the blue, Seong Ah returns in cliché fashion that calling it "cliché" wouldn't do it justice. A murderess has returned to her witness but how do we guarantee she remains with him in the most contrived way? Instead of creating a reasonable character who either keeps incriminating evidence for safe measure or discards them entirely to avoid the trouble of possessing something he shouldn't, the brilliant writer opts for Young Ha to keep half-incriminating evidence. That is, he keeps the dashcam footage history, which entails he'll be jeopardizing his life while in his possession, but the evidence is weak and circumstantial at best. Additionally, he cleans the bloodied record, the other half of the evidence necessary to bring about reasonable suspicion. Despite that, the nonsensical decision-making was perfectly orchestrated. This is because if Young Ha possessed both pieces of evidence, a quick sucker punch to Seong Ah's face upon her unwelcomed appearance, would be the impetus to stun, restrain, and call the cops on her. In his current state, the pension house owner cannot do that. Instead, he and Seong Ah must now apparently live together. But, the whole purpose for a half-incriminating evidence, rather than no evidence at all, is to prepare ANOTHER cliché that occurs when our soft-hearted, child-murder witness has change of heart.

Young Ha cannot fathom living beside his rambunctious, new neighbor. But Young Ha only has circumstantial evidence. So how can he compile enough evidence that goes beyond a reasonable doubt? A voice recorder will do! Now after he records Seong Ah's confession, he can simply drive off into the sunset and present the police his undeniable evidence. Nope. In predictable fashion, not only does the psycho woman conveniently spot the recorder packaging, she finds Young Ha right as he pulls up to the police station, floors the gas pedal and T-bone collides the his car in broad daylight for every eyewitness to see. Is this disappointing or actually impressive stuff? Talk about making the most of something!

That question is quickly put to rest in the following scene. We see a bloodied Young Ha in a wrecked car and Seong Ha with a mean glare casually approaching him. His car is bellowing with smoke as he is losing consciousness. Cops are running over to rescue the owner. Everyone saw what had happened. So, all the cops need to do is place Seong Ah under arrest for attempted murder, or at least, reckless endangerment, right? Just as viewers eagerly await for Justice to be served on an ice-cold platter, the writer jumps out of the screen and whispers into our ears, "Did anyone ACTUALLY see what happened?" And just like that, the attempted murder becomes nothing but a wistful, evaporating memory. When viewers awake from their hypnotic slumber, we are convinced the accident never happened. Young Ha and Seong Ah also go back to being neighborly housemates. Then, some time later, a douchebag cop loverboy appears. He dies. Once again, no one gives a hoot about his going missing.

Finally, the two timelines converge as one, but the timelines are not the only thing that changes. There is an abrupt and drastic tonal shift where the series morphs into some box-office action flick, losing all the tension that the first half laboriously spent attempting to build up. Instead, that tension is quickly replaced with more clichés, logical gaps, and half-assed writing:
A man carries a rifle into a hospital filled with people, shoots another man, leaps out of the window of the several story building suffering from minor injury, and limps away. Authority figures practically do not exist and wend along the sidelines unless we conveniently need them to clean up the messy story at the end (or to summarize the drama). Safety concerns are nonexistent in this show as the characters line up like sheeps to a slaughterhouse to confront a madwoman. But actually, it turns out Seong Ah lacks strength and is easily overpowered! Oh wait, but it turns out the other characters lack brain cells! A car comes crashing through the side of art gallery leading to destruction of property and endangerment of people's lives. The writer's response to clean this mess? Money. Because we all know rich people are above the law and escape their openly criminal behavior, duh!

After going through various cumbersome shenanigans, the closing curtain draws near. We face both killers individually: Hyang Cheol in his visiting cell; Seong Ah at gun point by her ex-husband. And when both killers are supposed to explain the BIG why: Why did we have to sit through those mindless and droning action sequences? Why did either killers carelessly go to a lodge, where anyone can spot them, to exact their deeds, instead of what killers typically do to avoid eyewitnesses? Essentially, both of their responses were, "Meh, because I felt like it in the heat of the moment; because I am CRAAAAZY."

What the fu--

Ribbit... Ribbit... Ribbit...

Then, the brilliance of the writer hits us like the rays of Heaven:

A FROG DIES FROM A STONE THROWN INADVERTENTLY

The mumbo jumbo yapanese is to connect it to the frog idiom: the killers are the stone tossers randomly chucking their rocks; the business owners are the poor frogs! Of course, it all makes sense; duh, it was all because of the frogs, as the title suggests; this writer is a genius!

The Frog is the prototypical example of consumerist culture gone haywire. The art of screenplay and directing has become formulaic cookie-cutters, a pastiche of previous hits but devoid of authenticity or identity, relying on subterfuge and dynamic action sequences to compensate for its lack of depth and creativity. Any semblance of a "voice" is to pitch a tame, yet spineless position that matches the zeitgeist:
The ultra-rich are evil! Everyone in Korea was unilaterally outraged by media encroachment, so let's write about that in a comically obvious way! But let's add some conventional wisdom, such as a frog idiom, to give the series some narrative depth!
In the mean time, the characters can forcefully draw out the connection with their unnatural dialogue.

The Frog is symbolic. It is a frog inflating its throat, a generic, empty piece of entertainment with captivating images, that tries to croak deeper than its previous, but is caught unawares when people eventually find it annoying. If anything, The Frog represents enough time has passed for commodified art forms to have become the norm and the accepted. With its positive reception marks another sad victory for the factory-churning, AI-generated future that algorithmically deconstruct and reconstruct human creativity for fast consumption. Here's to a superficial and soulless tomorrow.

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Dull Writing and Insane Characters

While there are some Horror movies that have alluded to various religions, and have done them successfully, "Sleep" seems to presume the audience is already familiar and sympathetic with Shamanism and Buddhism, including their esoteric rituals and practices without any justification or explanation. As a result, those unfamiliar with these practices will find the character's behavior off-putting and their responses bizarre. For example, in one instance, the priestess starts ringing her bell loudly to deter the supposed demon possessing the husband. However, she approaches the baby and starts to violently ring a bell against the infant's ears causing it to wail. Both the ML and FL, who are apparently skeptics at this point, don't consider at any point to perhaps engage this shenanigan without the baby? Rather, the delirious and sleep deprived FL becomes more and more convinced by the shaman's antics, while the ML gets slightly agitated and shields the baby, but does not assume that the unruly practice might either traumatize or harm it. At this point, the realism of the story is lost for me because none characters are acting as how normal people and purported skeptics would: bothered and protective.

When we get to final segment of the movie, there is an interesting dilemma of whether the female protagonist is suffering from paranoia or whether her husband is genuinely possessed. While interesting, it was, unfortunately, poorly executed. To shock viewers of the wife's lunacy, the perspective is shifted from the wife's to the husband's. Then, we find out to convince the demon to leave, the female protagonist not only kills the neighbor's dog, but kidnaps the neighbor and threatens to drill a hole in the neighbor's skull. What is the neighbor's response to all these violent acts against her? That the demon should stop possessing the husband... Initially, I thought, perhaps the neighbor was simply pretending to go along with the protagonist's hysteria to preserve her own life. But then, the neighbor begins to converse with the husband as if he were really her dad, begs him to leave, and promises she would perform ancestral rites for him. There is not a single indication that the neighbor is performing an act, but rather we see both the neighbor and the protagonist believing the husband is possessed, insistent, and seemingly justifying FL's previously fanatic behavior to expunge the demon.

For any rational person, whether religious or not, this is incredibly abnormal behavior and dialogue. Suppose you were a devout Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. and someone kidnapped you because the kidnapper believed your parent's spirit/demon was haunting her or her family member. Wouldn't the initial reaction always be: This person is insane; please stop her? Wouldn't you try to reason with the kidnapper when given the opportunity to? Apparently, not in this movie. And without surprise, it turns out the husband was actually possessed..! The spirit of the father leaves (and mind you, we are still in husband's or 3rd party POV and no longer the wife's) and thus, the implied message in the ending is: everything was justified and peace has returned... Yikes.

There are other unconvincing behaviors in the movie as well, such as the wife's wanting to ignore and put up with her husband's strangeness because of an arbitrary signpost that he crafted: "Together, we can overcome everything!" Ah yes, that's why I should allow my husband near my baby even though he accidentally killed my fur-baby because, apparently, we can overcome this situation together by jeopardizing my baby's life? No pain, no gain; no risk, no reward! I genuinely don't understand what sort of rationale, if any, was in this writer's mind when creating this nonsense.

It's a shame too because I think the movie would had a lot more potential if it went with a psychological than a supernatural direction, or if it was not written by a religious extremist, since the possibility that the husband acted as a demon (for he is an actor, though merely an extra) in the end could have been a perfectly tenable theory a la Witness for the Prosecution. That is, until it is squandered by every other character's reaction, the very improbable or impossible "coincidences" in the movie, and the lazy POV change at the end.

All in all, the writing is mediocre, the story was decent, and the acting was great. It had its thrilling moments and is a fun movie, but it is far from outstanding.

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Frustrating

The recipe for this film: induce random conflicts for the sole purpose of setting up meaningless plot twist after plot twist, a sprinkle of symbolism here and there, various graphic acts with a touch of unusual characters in equally bizarre costumes, and all neatly packaged with a final comical, voyeuristic homoerotic act.
With some reflection, it is clear to us that each ingredient was tactfully manufactured to artificially arouse the audience with shock value. And perhaps it is only these scenes, and not the story as a whole, that the audience will remember. Yet, keener eyes will not succumb to such parlor tricks. Despite the tight script, the screenplay itself was contrived and unnatural. The movie was a boisterous performance to posturize Park's chops as an experienced director and a film enthusiast, but not as a storyteller. The film had every element of becoming great story but resorts to tawdry gimmicks. All in all, The Handmaiden, although technically better filmed, is a far cry from Park Chan Wook's earlier notable works, which seamlessly showed originality and a honest exploration of life's gravitas.

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Crazy Delight

Rewatching this gem after so many years, I am surprised how little recognition this film has among Korean film enthusiasts. There are fans who know all the main directors and love to watch arthouse directors, such as Hong Sang Soo, but whenever I ask them have you seen "Save the Green Planet?" I'm often met with a perplexed look: "What's that?"

Save the Green Planet!, Jang Joon Hwan's feature-length debut film, is a sci-fi, comedy, psychological thriller. Yes, somehow Jang Joon Hwan manages to masterfully weave the disparate genres into one cohesive piece, all on his debut! The film is told from the perspective of Byeong Gu, a secluded beekeeper living in an house on top of a mountain. This house, however, is no ordinary house; it was rebuilt over an abandoned mannequin factory allowing for a labyrinthian underground palace with various elaborate makeshift devices and traps. Byeong Gu is also no ordinary man. He is a conspiracy theorist who is convinced that the CEO of a pharmaceuticals company is an alien overlord. Sheer madness and hilarity ensues when Byeong Gu kidnaps and traps the CEO under his house. Byeong Gu attempts to torture the truth out of the CEO, while he goes on with his ordinary day-to-day activities, while avoiding the attention of authorities, and all while treading the thin line of sanity and insanity.

What I most appreciated about the film is how Jang Joon Hwan subverts the traditional hero's journey and what we have instead is a very confused and pitiful villain against an asshole victim. Our morals are constantly tested, the legal procedure is flipped, and just as we are complicit in Byeong Gu's devious acts, we also end up a little bit insane with him.
It has moments of absurdity with surrealistic elements, but Jang Joon Hwan doesn't use the surreal as a cheap tool to lose the logical coherence of the film as most surrealist comedies do. Rather, the surreal in this film is a tool used to create or alleviate tension and self doubt.

Unfortunately, after Save the Green Planet's box-office flop, Jang Joon Hwan must await nearly a decade for another attempt at feature-length film. But by then, the damage is done; the creativity and ambitions of Save the Green Planet! is long gone and what's left is caged bird: the conventions that Jang Joon Hwan overcame becomes his shackles.

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Social Commentary or Mental Health?

If you want a drama to accurately represent and inform viewers about mental illness, then this is not for you. If you want reasonable characters and complex dialogue, then this is not for you. If you want mature characters who are expected to act their age, then this is not for you. If you enjoy a watered-down and amateur screenplay about human interactions that also deals with mental issues, and tries to hide its flaws with pretentious moralizing, occasional comic relief, and a flurry of needless romance, then this is right up your alley!

Although the shows has a stellar start with interesting safety facts and quirks about working in a psychiatric facility, that is about the extent of where the facts regarding mental illness are informative. At one instance, the show briefly mentions the scientific and physical (neurochemical/anatomical) explanations for mental illnesses, but very soon after, it completely dispels or forgets the physical and tries to mainly attribute the cause to societal pressures and injustices. In other words, it is the overbearing mother, the despotic manager, or the predatory capitalistic society that is causing our mental health crisis. And the universal remedy is that people just need to take their meds and have others accept them; or, for those suffering from severe OCD, fall in love and be cured! This is a completely naive picture that an introductory course in psychiatry will quickly dispel. To make matters worse, the "prescriptions" aren't scientifically backed advice but are seemingly a mixture of the writer's dogmatism, sociological assumptions, and attempts at psychoanalysis ultimately cultivating victim mentality in the name of social commentary. The patients become the victims of the overused trope: "society is the problem." Therefore, society must change; not the patients. Once their external environment changes, the patients, too, magically begin to improve.

What this drama portrays for the "mentally ill" are those who have had their worldviews, ambitions, goals, and desires destroyed by societal pressures. Then, it throws in various mental illnesses ad-hoc. These situations may describe some cases, as traumatic experiences can trigger underlying issues or make one more susceptible to developing underlying conditions, but the environment is rarely the cause. The environment does not force your physical make-up to change and leave you in an inelastic, neurochemically impaired state which is predominantly the situation for patients who require long term stays at a psychiatric ward. The mentally ill aren't exclusive to members of society who have had difficult and restricted lives or those who have failed at their chances for glory. They exist for all types of people and can happen to anyone, anytime: with or without reason, poor or rich, successful or unsuccessful, sociable or reclusive, physically fit or unfit, etc. What will the writer claim was the catalyst for John Nash's schizophrenia and psychosis? Too much success? For possessing too much mathematical prowess? Or, Robin William's depression? Too great of a comedian? For possessing too much fame and wit?

Beside the mental illness stuff, the drama is quite over-the-top and immature; it constantly establishes a sense of brooding for shallow perspectives. The first 2 episodes seem to set the tone for the remainder of the drama, so if that's your cup of tea, then go for it. It definitely wasn't for me.

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Existentialism Gone Amok.

The drama portrays interesting apocalyptic scenarios, using philosophical undertones to convey its point.
We can see appropriate criticisms against the religious zealots and the tyrannical priest class abusing its authority to gain control over the mass, a retelling of Nietzsche's biting critique on religion. We also receive a neat existentialist prescription: Don't rely on authority, rely on yourself and empiricism. Face the helms of danger with courage. Settle matters with your own choice and self-governance! Sounds great on paper. The issue?

None of the existentialist philosophers who encouraged us to think for ourselves encountered a supernatural floating head that damned people to Hell nor bootleg grey Hulks eradicating people left and right. All of them presupposed that God did not exist, so the natural recourse is to take matters into our own hands. Although a slight distinction, that slight distinction makes for a understandable and reasonable argument into one that is completely untenable. In other words, the drama conveys the most radical idea: Even if God or supernatural beings exist and gave us presumably divine commands, we say fuck it and take matters into our own hands and how we see fit.

The antidote against an unstoppable supernatural force is cute, but flimsy. It is as if we encountered an encroaching catastrophic tsunami with nowhere to hide, and the writer confidently assures us we need to face it directly for it is our only option. Fueled by his inspiring words, we brace ourselves and await the tidal behemoth. Any sensible person running away from the crashing waves dies and perishes. However, we, until the brink of death, face forward and are rewarded as a portion of the tide splits and passes right by us. We remain undamaged for we did not despair! Just as the writer said, we decided and accomplished our goal. The great irony? We relied on a divine force of the writer to part the seas to save ourselves from this dilemma despite our proclamation to overcome the situation by ourselves.

Similarly, despite the humanist prescription of the show, the characters rely on Deus ex machina to rescue them. The protagonists mindlessly retort their individualistic beliefs, yet escape their perilous circumstances with the writer's convenient interventions; a direct contradiction of the confused theme declared by the drama.

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