On the surface, director Park Hoon-jung is telling a Superman-adjacent story: A very special kid, thanks to deadly circumstances, becomes an orphan and grows up trying to fit into a world that can’t even begin to understand them. From its brutal and electrifying fight scenes to its icy and gritty feel and its core mystery, The Witch Part 1 is a much more exciting, unforgettable watch than its generic title may suggest. Possibly there’s some nuance lost in translating it over to English from its native Korean (the movie debuted in Korea in 2018). Look past that melodramatic, even confusing name this is not a sequel to the 2016 horror movie The Witch. While the coronavirus pandemic has smashed the brakes on Marvel and Warner Bros.’s summer blockbuster slate this year, the next great superhero movie is already here, streaming on Netflix: The Witch Part 1: The Subversion. In each edition, find one more thing from the world of culture that we highly recommend. Dark Eyes Retrovision #14: The Rage: Carrie 2 (USA.One Good Thing is Vox’s recommendations feature.Prospect (Canada/USA 2018: Dir Christopher Caldwel.The Godfather (USA 1972: Dir Francis Ford Coppola).Goof on the Loose - the Films of Ray Dennis Steckl.The Witch - Part1 - The Subversion (2018 South Kor.Supermarket Sweep #7: Reviews of The Exorcism of K.That's a shame because I'd be really keen on seeing this story developed further. The film's title suggests a franchise in the offing, although my understanding is that no sequels are currently planned. The action scenes are superbly choreographed and, in true Asian cinema style, brutal and graphic, but for once the story is kept fairly uncluttered plot wise. True it has its fair share of cartoonish bad'uns, not least programme director Dr Baek (Min-soo Jo), a woman so relentlessly mean that she should have been provided with her own moustache to twiddle, but the film's overall tightness and economy of storytelling (even at just over two hours) keeps things focused and resists a descent into cliche.ĭa-mi Kim delivers an outstanding performance as Ja-yoon, whether playing the shy schoolgirl of the first half or the full on warrior required in the movie's spectacular final sequences, but without ever sacrificing an essential vulnerability rendered by her odd upbringing (the scene when she first turns the tables on her aggressors is truly shocking). But like his Korean stablemate Chan-wook Park, director Park is known for dark subject matter, so while this film could have been a fairly straightforward superhero(ine) movie, he instead delivers an intense story of revenge which sits at the opposite end of the dramatic spectrum to most of the caped crusader 'universe' movies. Part 1 of The Witch, which previewed at Glasgow FrightFest earlier this year, may be advertised as mining John Wick and The X Men films for its thrills, but it also has a jolly good plunder of The Matrix, Scanners, The Fury, Hanna and The Girl With All the Gifts. For it appears that the people in charge of the facility from which Ja-yoon escaped are keen for her to return, but she has one or two tricks up her sleeve which they weren't expecting. She's also suffering from increasingly frequent searing headaches, giving her brief glimpses of her supposed lost memories. More worryingly, a threatening young man accosts Ja-yoon on a train, appearing to know her from the past. Ten years later Ja-yoon is a bright young woman who excels in her school studies and has a chirpy best friend, Myung-hee, who encourages her to participate in a TV talent show called 'Birth of a Star.' Ja-yoon is so good she automatically goes through to the quarter finals, but she inches ahead of the competition by supposedly performing some magic tricks, which the viewer does not see.īut things aren't all good in her world her adopted parents are getting older, and her 'mother' has early onset Alzheimers. The girl has no memory and cannot remember her name the couple call her Koo Ja-yoon. In action director and screenwriter (he wrote the script for I Saw the Devil) Hoon-jung Park's latest movie, a girl escapes from a medical facility and is taken in by a middle aged couple.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |