This review may contain spoilers
Interesting Korean folk horror, uneven pacing and tone
A film that's hard for me to gauge, there's some very good things and a lot of middling stuff. To begin with, the camerawork is pretty good, the countryside and village lovely, even if you can feel a slight lack of budget in the scarcity of different settings that take advantage of the natural surroundings.
The little girl's performance is impressive and far superior to the rest of the actors, with the possible exception of the old Japanese man. The rest of the cast are far too over-the-top at times, especially during the "action" scenes, which are a tad amateurish and hardly believable (some of the supporting characters roll around on the floor for no reason at all).
There's a palpable desire to inject tension through excessive shouting and melodrama.
However, this doesn't go down well with the film's rather unpolished pace, which is crammed with one crime scene after another in the first hour, then much slower in the second, with no real justification for it. There's not much ( as far as I'm concerned ) atmosphere here, and I felt very little tension or anxiety. What does not quite work is that the detective aspect ultimately has very little importance for the characters themselves, even if as far as the audience is concerned, we are left in doubt right up to the last minute, but more by the limp mechanical storytelling than by any real thirst to discover the mystery.
The long, ecstatic shamanic exorcism scene is worth mentioning, though, as it's a real blast. The contrast between the shaman's showmanship and the Japanese old man's more primordial rite (beautiful white chickens and a team of musicians for the former, rather rustic black chickens and somewhat primitive drum beats for the latter) encourages us to see a duality at work, despite the fact that the ending leads us to understand that the two were in cahoots.
Unfortunately, there's far too much inconceivable idiocy (in their choices and reactions) on the part of the characters, and many of the events that unfold only happen because people don't talk to each other, and the role of the angel-ghost girl is literally a bad deus ex machina who only exists because she chooses not to interact with the scenario until she's called upon (and so she lets a lot of people die without any real justification).
That said, it's a twist I really like, but the execution is really messy.
There are several potential films in this feature, as evidenced by the total absence of the slightly black humorous tone of the beginning, which evaporates completely without having any weapons powerful enough to compensate for this absence, the action being limp and ham-fisted and the horrific side quite non-existent, as the misfortunes fall mainly on tertiary characters, apart from the protagonist's daughter. Despite all this, I don't consider it too long (even if the final scenes are far too artificial in their build-up to suspense), and I was gripped right up to the conclusion.
It just didn't stay in the oven long enough, and the main ingredients should have been rebalanced.
The little girl's performance is impressive and far superior to the rest of the actors, with the possible exception of the old Japanese man. The rest of the cast are far too over-the-top at times, especially during the "action" scenes, which are a tad amateurish and hardly believable (some of the supporting characters roll around on the floor for no reason at all).
There's a palpable desire to inject tension through excessive shouting and melodrama.
However, this doesn't go down well with the film's rather unpolished pace, which is crammed with one crime scene after another in the first hour, then much slower in the second, with no real justification for it. There's not much ( as far as I'm concerned ) atmosphere here, and I felt very little tension or anxiety. What does not quite work is that the detective aspect ultimately has very little importance for the characters themselves, even if as far as the audience is concerned, we are left in doubt right up to the last minute, but more by the limp mechanical storytelling than by any real thirst to discover the mystery.
The long, ecstatic shamanic exorcism scene is worth mentioning, though, as it's a real blast. The contrast between the shaman's showmanship and the Japanese old man's more primordial rite (beautiful white chickens and a team of musicians for the former, rather rustic black chickens and somewhat primitive drum beats for the latter) encourages us to see a duality at work, despite the fact that the ending leads us to understand that the two were in cahoots.
Unfortunately, there's far too much inconceivable idiocy (in their choices and reactions) on the part of the characters, and many of the events that unfold only happen because people don't talk to each other, and the role of the angel-ghost girl is literally a bad deus ex machina who only exists because she chooses not to interact with the scenario until she's called upon (and so she lets a lot of people die without any real justification).
That said, it's a twist I really like, but the execution is really messy.
There are several potential films in this feature, as evidenced by the total absence of the slightly black humorous tone of the beginning, which evaporates completely without having any weapons powerful enough to compensate for this absence, the action being limp and ham-fisted and the horrific side quite non-existent, as the misfortunes fall mainly on tertiary characters, apart from the protagonist's daughter. Despite all this, I don't consider it too long (even if the final scenes are far too artificial in their build-up to suspense), and I was gripped right up to the conclusion.
It just didn't stay in the oven long enough, and the main ingredients should have been rebalanced.
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