Director: Park Hoon-jung
Production Company: Gold Moon Film Production
Country: South Korea
Year: 2018
I think that someone was watching a lot of YA horror/action anime before writing this film. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing; Future Diary was very good before the last 6 episodes or so (and Future Diary: Redial didn’t help fix that), and franchises such as Tokyo Ghoul have done very well for themselves. And when you combine that sense of ‘young-person-is-special-with-lots-of-blood-and-killing’ narrative that anime loves, with the guy that wrote I Saw The Devil, you know to buckle up, because the ride is about to get wild.
After escaping from some kind of top secret facility as a child, Koo Ja Yoon has grown up to be a shy but intelligent young woman. After appearing on a talent contest, several groups of strange agents are now after her, guns at the ready, and the past that she has repressed has come back to haunt her, with violence not far behind.
In front of the camera, everything’s very well done. Kim Da-Mi does a wonderful job as Ja Yoon, bringing the innocence and psychopathy in equal measure. Particular shout-out to Go Min-Si as Ja Yoon’s friend, Myung-Hee, who just runs headfirst into the role of hyperactive, talkative, normal girl that’s just wanting something incredible to happen, yet can’t stand it when it hits her. Hoon-jung’s direction is good, if not stellar, giving some nicely framed moments enhanced to their fullest by the cinematography of Young-Ho Kim and Teo Lee (I’m getting all the names from IMDb, so my apologies if names are spelled/arranged incorrectly). Everything looks fine and good and well.
But, we have some major rot in the film’s woodwork, because the writing needs looking at. In hindsight, I should have been tipped off when ‘Part 1’ was in the title and, upon looking up the film, Part 2 doesn’t even have any producers attached yet. The pacing is off in a major way, in that by the end of the 2 hour runtime (short by Korean standards, who regularly take films up to 2.5 hours easy), we’ve essentially had two acts and the teaser for a third. Who ran off with the third act, I don’t know. Therefore, the change from Act 1 to Act 2 actually comes halfway through the movie, if a little past it. That’s wrong by anyone’s standards because it doesn’t flow nicely, but it means that the first half feels impressively devoid of anything that actually has any substantial impact, with the second being far too rushed. There’s a lot of drip-feeding of information and encounters of characters that can be cut out because they don’t do anything that other encounters don’t already do. People out there will be crying ‘but you don’t need three acts in a film’. Well you do when you’ve written it to have them.
Act 2 brings all the issues home becaue it comprises of a big old exposition dump, followed by a bloody fight to the death (with lots of CGI and sped-up footage – I want to use the term ‘overcranking’ here if I may – which makes everything look fake and unimpressive) with a little bit tagged on at the end where our main character goes on to eventually settled what was started (here act 3 should start). And then it just ends. Bam. Sequel bait, job done. The film feels like it was planned as a 3 hour film but they told him they could only have 2 hours, so they went to sequel bait it to give someone high up the middle finger. There. That’ll show them. And all the drip-feeding of information throughout the first hour leads up to us being pretty much able to understand the backstory without needing the big info-dump which is given to us, so why bother? Drip feed the info, or cut all that out, and just explain everything all at once in one go. You can’t have both and tell us virtually the same information twice; it just doesn’t work like that.
Additionally, one of the main characters has a very massive change in personality in the second half of the film, going from likeable to psychopath, and a nigh-on invincible psychopath at that, with superpowers to boot. I think they get, maybe two brief bullet hits, but what the hell? Superpowers, so that don’t mean jack. Carves up all the bad guys with ease, kill all the tension, no fear, walk out, prepare for the next film (see Wonder Woman for the same issue). By now I’ve lost all my empathy for this character, no matter how much backstory you try to throw at me. There’s such a 180 that it might as well be a different character altogether, and it’s not the character I grew to like in the first hour of the film. An attempt to bring it back at the end doesn’t work because it feels forced. It’s just plain wrong.
I understand that you’re trying to set up a franchise, and you’ve got questions you want to answer in future installments and that’s all very well and good, but you can’t compromise on getting the first damn film to feel like it’s own story. Here, because there’s an act missing, the character arc is incomplete. The performances are great, and I’m sure future installments will complete everything that was started here to satisfaction. But finishing off complete story, even just one part of a story, is not the job of Film 2. That’s the job of Film 1. You can’t distract me with good acting, nice lighting, and some bloody gunshots from the fact there’s a third of a film missing and it therefore ends up being emotionally and narratively hollow. Don’t take the mickey.
-Rating: 4/10
-Review by Kieran Judge
-Twitter: kjudgemental
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