Horror cinema teaches us many things including caution and recently, there have been more than a few lessons about the dangers of going up into the mountains – and not just for the usual reasons, such as (mainly) the risk of falling to your death from a great height. In Confession (2024) (aka Kokuhaku Confession), the regular perils of exposure and injury are all present and correct but, as is so often the case, there’s the human aspect to consider, too. Old friends Asai (Tôma Ikuta) and Jiyong (Yang Ik-joon) have been undertaking a yearly mountain trek in order to respect the memory of their friend Sayuri, who tragically died on a climb sixteen years previously. As I’ve said previously, the idea of honouring a miserable death at a great height by repeating the activity which brought about that death will never make absolute sense to me, but there we go: we meet both men on their yearly pilgrimage.
Except this year, there’s a snag. A sudden storm has come in, cutting them off and making them fear for their lives: we come in on this situation in medias res, at which point we realise that Jiyong is already seriously injured and unable to walk. Asai is devastated, but his devastation turns into horror when Jiyong, believing his death to be imminent, makes a startling confession to his friend, hoping to clear his conscience before the inevitable. This would be one thing, but when Asai is able to discern the shape of a mountain rescue cabin within reach – even if he has to carry Jiyong there – it creates a moral quandary. Does Asai pretend he never heard the confession? Or does he address it?
The problem is set aside for the very short term, as the two men struggle to the relative safety of the cabin: Asai busies himself lighting a fire and getting them both as comfortable as possible, still talking about the hope of rescue. But the fact of the confession hangs in the air between them, and before very long it begins to drive a wedge between them. Jiyong is more than remorseful for what he said; he’s actively beginning to suspect that Asai will now hand him over to the authorities. As for Asai, he’s growing steadily more concerned that his old pal is going to harm him; after all, couldn’t he just say that there was only one survivor?
It’s a decent set-up for a tense situation and Confession makes good use of its central premise: you do get a sense that these two men are genuinely cut off, left to their own devices and vulnerable not just to the elements, but to each other. Smaller plot additions – such as the loss of their only working mobile phone (or is it lost?) and the ways in which the film steadily opens up other spaces and possibilities, even within the confined environment of the cabin, all work together well. Whilst you will perhaps find yourself wondering why the men don’t get straight into it and address the confession head on, you also remember that there are some cultural and societal expectations at play here too – nationality, class, gender – which are revealed. It’s probably fair to say, however, that ‘things escalate quickly’: Jiyong, as the man with the most to potentially lose, goes from quiet and thoughtful to maniacal in what feels like a few easy moves, though he inhabits the role fully, and makes for a good, frightening presence. If the film seems to be setting up Asai as a guiltless victim, then the film has more to offer than that thankfully, revealing new information about this character in such a way that it casts doubt on his good guy persona, giving the film more of a middle act than it might otherwise have had.
However, to render the improbable probable, Confession does play fast and loose with some of its plot points – to the extent that, on occasion, and even allowing for some of the more overblown content and the film’s style overall, it’s less convincing. Jiyong’s leg injury, for example, sometimes seems to be wholly incapacitating and yet, in the midst of this, he seems able to suddenly and silently manoeuvre himself around the cabin; yes, this allows a few killer set-ups, true, but then in other instances, he struggles to get anywhere at all, and in those instances it’s plot relevant that he can’t. The film wants it both ways, perhaps. But perhaps the film’s biggest and most obvious offence is where it makes such ample use of the ‘but it was all a dream’ get-out clause, building up to a crescendo which – if you know the film’s runtime – would probably mean the film running out of ground early, except that it then backpedals on the deed, revealing that it didn’t happen like that anyway. This can make the action feel repetitive. This, most likely, is an example of where basing a film on a popular manga leads to a few potential issues. What works as drawn sometimes presents the odd problem when it’s turned into live action cinema; the issues of how you get from one panel to another, for instance, work a little differently when filmed as they require more of a clear transition between key moments, and this is probably the one most obvious sticking point in Confession.
If you can set this aside, though, then there’s lots to love here: it becomes more and more intense, offers up some ingenious scenes and ideas and never sacrifices the near-stifling claustrophobia which it’s at pains to establish from the very earliest scenes. It all gets rather bloody and nasty, too, which comes as a bit of a surprise from director Nobuhiro Yamashita, better known so far for his comedies and buddy movies (though, after a fashion, I suppose that’s what this is). Could Sayuri (Nao Honda) have been given more to do in this script? Sure. But the film’s economical runtime (just over seventy minutes) excuses some of the film’s weaker elements, keeping things taught and focused enough to shine.
Confession (2024) featured at this year’s Celluloid Screams.