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By Nia Edwards-Behi

It’s the 1950s. Montse (Macarena Gomez) lives with her younger sister, Hermana (Nadia de Santiago), in a small apartment. Both their parents are dead, but their father (Luis Tosar) remains a spectral figure in the apartment for the burdened and fragile older woman. Hermana has just turned 18, and Montse struggles to see her as an adult, having spent many years looking after her. What’s more, Montse suffers from agoraphobia, but briefly overcomes her fear when a neighbour, Carlos (Hugo Silva), injures himself falling down the stairs outside their door. Montse brings the man into the apartment in order to nurse him back to health…but in doing so, sets the scene for her own unravelling and the undoing of her relationship with her sister.

The biggest strength of Shrew’s Nest is certainly its design elements – the set, costumes, hair and make-up are all spot on. These all give the film a very definite sense of place, and given that the whole film, more or less, takes place on one apartment, it’s important that said sense of place it well done. Elsewhere, for me, the film was less impressive. It’s not so much that the film is bad – far from it – it’s just that there’s a lot of visual polish on what is a relatively underwhelmingly and predictable melodrama.

I don’t have anything against melodrama, that’s for sure, and as I’ve said elsewhere I rather enjoy it. The trouble for me with Shrew’s Nest is that it’s really rather po-faced and serious melodrama. Central to my dislike of the narrative is the fact that it’s called Shrew’s Nest (or, I believe, just ‘Shrews’ in the original Spanish). There’s nothing wrong with depicting a typically shrewish character, and indeed the period setting befits this quite nicely. However, Macarena Gomez’s performance is hysterical from the outset. It’s certainly not a bad performance, it just doesn’t go anywhere, and truly verges on the hammy by the film’s climax. In a film that took itself less seriously, this wouldn’t have been quite so out of place.

The characterisation in the film is relatively superficial as well, with the traumatised older sister (I mean, when Luis Tosar plays the over-bearing dad you know something went wrong in the past), the gutsy younger sister, and the suave womaniser joined only by a cast of minor characters who do little but meddle. It doesn’t help that Hermana, who I’m fairly certain we’re meant to be sympathetic toward, was, for me, entitled and bratty throughout. Compounded with the fact that Carlos is a total creep from the start, and yet these two women fall head over heels for him, I didn’t feel I had any characters to really side with.

The unfolding of the narrative is predictable to the end, but it does get pleasingly gorier as it goes on. In that regard the film is very well done, again, so technically the film has a great deal going for it. It’s nice to see a horror film’s central psycho be a woman with daddy issues, rather than yet another sub-Bates mummy’s boy, but all things considered she’s not much of an original psycho, either.

I would recommend Shrew’s Nest, for sure, as it’s a very well-made film. For me, though, I just didn’t feel like I cared enough for the characters to really submit to the film’s world nor its story, and therefore finished the film feeling distinctly unsatisfied.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Hideo Nakata’s most recent films have not had the glowing reception his reputation following Ringu and Dark Water might have set him up for. I quite like 2013’s The Complex, myself, which, although a bit cliched was certainly enjoyable and featured some effective chills. Monsterz seems to have failed to impress critics (those writing in English, anyway), with ‘middling’ seeming to be the best assessment of it. Well, would you believe it, I couldn’t disagree more. I thoroughly enjoyed Monsterz, its sombre tone and strong characters making it wholly compelling, in my opinion. Maybe the action gets a bit repetitive, but I enjoyed it regardless because I felt so on-side with the characters. Monsterz is a remake of a Korean film from 2010, Haunters, which I will most definitely be seeking out as well, having enjoyed Nakata’s version so much.

Tatsuya Fujiwara stars at the anonymous central monster of Nakata’s film, a traumatised young man who is able to mentally control anyone around him. He lives a life of solitude, primarily using his power to steal money to sustain his life, and to amuse himself. He is enraged, one day, to discover a man immune to his power, kindly Suichi (Takayuki Yamada). Suichi is struck by a car one day while working, and miraculously survives – but he does lose his job. Rather than demanding money from the old man who ran him over, Suichi seeks employment in his shop, and so continues with his life, happily working alongside Kanae (Satomi Ishihara), the old man’s daughter, and still seeing his friends Akira (Taiga) and Jun (Motoki Ochiai). However, our anonymous monster is not finished with him, and soon Suichi and his friends find themselves in the middle of an extremely dangerous battle. As Suichi confesses to a strange power of his own, the ability to heal, he must face his own monstrosity in order to confront his more malevolent counterpart.

The film starts with an extremely strong opening scene, and indeed it continues in such a way that offers stand-out sequences amongst an otherwise melodramatic narrative. Now, I like that sort of thing, so I actually enjoyed what might seem to others a weakness of the film. It helps a lot that the characters are extremely likeable, and the chemistry between them a highlight – Suichi’s relationship with his friends Akira and Jun is just as enjoyable and believable as his budding (and thankfully not over-played) romance with Kanae. If anything Kanae is underused, as she is honestly just there as a love-interest, but, Ishihara gives a stonking performance in a minor role regardless. Akira and Jun are devoted to their friend, and it’s really quite lovely to watch. Jun is a bit of a flaming gay stereotype, and to begin with I was a little dubious of such a flagrant character, but he’s actually extremely likeable and gets given more to do than you might expect, so in the end his character wasn’t as problematic as I was expecting.

The most impressive aspect of the film for me is its overall melancholic tone. The overriding theme of the film, I think, is guilt. Its main characters suffer from guilt and trauma from their childhoods, which makes their standoff all the more compelling, but we also have Kanae, during the film, being shielded from and then confronted with her own sense of guilt over things she is forced to do when her mind is being controlled. While Suichi and Kanae do have this sort-of romance sub-plot, it’s something of a sad one, and that’s quite refreshing when the film could have been a lot more conventional about it. The film’s ending semi-absolves various characters for their guilt, but still felt a little downbeat to me.

There’s a sequence set in an opera house, which sets up the film’s climax, which is probably the most impressive set-piece in the film. It’s genuinely eerie, and easily the most frightening part of the film. I’d struggle to call Monsterz a ‘horror’ film, as such, as it is rather more of a dramatic supernatural thriller, but the concept of pure mind-control is, naturally, scary, and is demonstrated best here. It’s also a sequence that best showcases the excellent use of sound and music in the film.

Overall, my impression of Monsterz was that it’s perhaps something of a ‘young’ film, which isn’t an impression I’m quite able to quantify. I wouldn’t call it ‘young adult’, but it’s perhaps a little too simple and melodramatic to fully satisfy a lot of people. However, inclined as I am to enjoy films like this, I got a lot out of Monsterz, and honestly thought it was extremely enjoyable.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I have been excited about The Dead Lands since I first heard about it last year – a period martial arts film conducted entirely in a minority language? That ticks a lot of my boxes, that does.
Hongi (James Rolleston) is something of the runt of the litter to his tribe. His father leads the tribe, and though honourable himself, falls foul of a nefarious rival clan. Almost all the tribe is slaughtered, and Hongi fails to either help or die alongside his brothers. The surviving tribeswomen tell him he must do what he can to seek vengeance. His only option is to enter the Dead Lands, a mysterious patch of land only the foolhardy dare traverse – because something still roams those lands and kills anyone who enters. Will Hongi make it through the trials of the Dead Lands and have his revenge?

First and foremost, the narrative is a simple, classic story. This is a coming of age quest film, and this simplicity is certainly an asset, as it allows for the cultural nuances to shine through, and for the unfamiliar martial art to get a proper showcase. That’s not to say that simplistic is weak, either – both Hongi and The Warrior (Lawrence Makoare) have moving threads in this tale. This is a timeless story, I suppose – it could easily be a Western, a kung fu movie, or, er, Star Wars.

Needless to say the film looks stunning. The New Zealand landscape is, naturally, both a beautiful and terrifying backdrop. If anything, I might have liked to have seen more of a sense of character to this terrain, rather than remain as simply beautiful scenery – this is a film called The Dead Lands, after all. A minor gripe, though, and it’s not just impressive scenery that gives this film a sense of place, but the superb costume, hair and make-up work too. Man-fanciers everywhere, this is very definitely the peplum you never knew you needed (well, sort of…you know what I mean).

Ultimately, of course, this is an action film, and boy does it deliver. At times excessively brutal (in a good way, duh), the fight choreography is awesome. I, as I imagine most people to be, am completely unfamiliar with traditional Maori fighting styles, and they’re a sight to behold. It’s great seeing haka in action after years of seeing it on the rugby pitch before the All Blacks stomp us into the ground – and it’s just as effective here. It’s worth noting that portions of the BIFFF crowd found the use of haka apparently hilarious, but frankly after you’ve seen massive warriors pulling faces once, if you’re still finding it hilarious 80, 90 minutes later then you might wanna sit down and have a think about your sense of humour.

Impressively, the film also boasts some great acting chops from Rolleston and Makoare in the central roles. They bring real nuance to what could have so easily been stock performances for stock characters. It’s a real pleasure to see an actor like Makoare, perhaps best known outside of New Zealand under heavy prosthetics, have a far-reaching role that really allows him to shine. For me, the most interesting aspect of the film is specifically cultural – we’ve honestly never had a film like this before, and that’s inherently fascinating. That this is also an extremely well-made film is one hell of a bonus.

If blokes (and the occasional lady) fighting isn’t your cup of tea then no amount of cultural interest is going to entirely win you over with The Dead Lands, as it is, ultimately, a really spectacular action film. If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, however, then The Dead Lands is an absolute treat from start to finish, and is a film that really deserves to be celebrated and savoured.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I’d seen the UK DVD release of Greatful Dead advertised quite a bit on the Third Window Films Facebook page, before seeing it in the line-up at BIFFF. It was a title I’d almost immediately added to my DVD wishlist, so the opportunity to see it on a big screen was extremely welcome.

Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) had something of a twisted childhood. Now an adult, she lives alone and likes it that way. A very merry recluse, she finds great joy in observing fellow loners and oddballs, usually maintaining her distance. However, she soon finds her ultimate ‘solitarian’, an old man who used to be famous, Mr. Shiomi (Takashi Sasano), who now spends his days alone and extremely unhappy. Nami sets up camp on a roof opposite the old man and spends her days happily observing his loneliness. Her happiness is dashed when the old man receives a visit from Su Yong (Kkobbi Kim), a young woman promoting Bible reading, and he finds a new lease of life, including connecting with religion and reconciling with his estranged family. Of course, for Nami, this just won’t do, and the extent of her possessiveness becomes dangerously – and lethally – apparent.

It’s fair to say Greatful Dead was not the film I was expecting, and no doubt all the better for it. Indeed, for much of its first third the film could easily be thought of as a straight-up comedy, and once events take a turn for the much, much darker, that humour is retained to wonderful effect. Kumi Takiuchi’s performance as Nami is phenomenal and, for me, was crucial to the film’s varying tones working so well and sitting so comfortably alongside each other. While she employs a certain over-the-top style for the film’s more purely funny moments, she is also, at other times, both terrifying and, somehow, incredibly sympathetic. The film’s greatest success is that it manages to be both extremely disturbing at times (there’s one scene in particular that made me especially uncomfortable), as well as being really quite moving, and all while retaining its sense of humour.

The film also succeeds in being more than a film about a lone wacko, and instead approaches the issues of loneliness, grief, estrangement and aging in a very entertaining and inventive way.
Here’s where I wish I could say I knew a bit more about Japanese culture in relation to this, as I think that might add some further depth to the film’s impact. This is beyond hikikomori – Nami’s loneliness has transcended mere reclusiveness and convinced her she’s happy, made her outwardly functioning and ultimately has a devastating effect. The film is strangely religious, too, with Su Yong being arguably the film’s most sympathetic character, which is surprising. Indeed, at the film’s close her importance truly comes to the fore.

The rather extreme tonal shifts in the film might be a bit jarring or off-putting to some, but for me this made the film all the more interesting than a more straight-forward horror, thriller or comedy might interesting have been. Greatful Dead is well worth your time, then, but for the love of god, go talk to someone afterwards.

Greatful Dead is available on UK Blu-ray now, from Third Window Films.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Hollow is a film I’ve been trying to see since last year, my desire to see it cemented by the fact that it features the rapper Suboi in a small role (niche, right?). Anyway, I was, naturally, particularly pleased to see it in the BIFFF line-up and I’m even more pleased to say that it did not disappoint. It surpassed all expectations, and was one of my favourite horror films at BIFFF.

Ai (Thanh My) is beloved by her family. When her sister Chi (Nguyen Hong An) momentarily turns her attention from her while she plays outside, the little girl drowns. The whole family is devastated, not least of all Chi. She’s got more problems too: she’s pregnant, and doesn’t want to be. A week after her death, Ai’s body is found. When her uncle police officer arrives to identify her, it turns out she might not be so dead after all. It soon becomes apparent that not all is quite right with Ai and it’s up to Chi to uncover some real-world secrets to discover the supernatural ordeal her sister is going through.

You might think Hollow sounds like standard horror fare, with a creepy kid and a distraught family and all that. In many ways it does play out a bit conventionally, but I only mean that in a good way – its conventions are very well done. Where Hollow excels is in its characters and its particular cultural location. The speed with which characters readily accept the possibility that Ai might be possessed is in line with their belief system – there’s no standing around arguing about whether or not to call a priest here, just get that girl to a temple and crack on with the ritual. This sense of cultural specificity is clear in the more real-world elements of the film too. When these two things merge at the film’s close it’s to great effect.

Needless to say, I found the film’s focus on female characters immensely refreshing. I know it’s often girls who get possessed in films like this, but it’s not really about Ai; it’s about Chi and her relationships to her various family members and then the women she discovers more about – dead and alive – as the film progresses. Certain things about her character actually threw me so much that I thought I had sussed out where the narrative was going – but not so. Nguyen Hong An gives a wonderful performance in a role that so easily could have been just ‘bratty teenager’. That performance is all the more impressive after learning that this is her debut film. It must also be said that Thanh My is also excellent, both as a regular little girl and after her return from the dead.

Hollow isn’t just praiseworthy for its characters and setting, though. It’s also just a very entertaining horror film. Yes, there are moments in which it resorts to a jump scare or an unnecessary stinger, but these moments are few and far between. Mostly, Hollow relies on a wonderfully eerie sense of atmosphere. This is down to some excellent direction and cinematography, as well as its strong performances. The film is also incredibly well-made and slick, something I confess I wasn’t expecting at all. The film’s climax is thrilling without being over-blown, and is immensely satisfying.
I can imagine Hollow being one of those great little films that get dumped on DVD with a change of title and a horribly Photoshopped cover that people might overlook because it’s yet another film about a possessed little girl. If you spot this one around, don’t pass it by – it’s a lot more than that.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I’ve been anticipating German Angst for a while now, ever since seeing the project announced on Michal Kosakowski’s Facebook page. Kosakowski directed the fascinating documentary Zero Killed, and here has worked alongside Andreas Marschall (director of the giallo homage Masks) and Jorg Buttgereit (director of the recently re-released Nekromantik) on this very German anthology. I must admit I was nervous going in to the film, wondering if it might be a little, well, a little extreme for the sake of it. The poster and trailer didn’t do much to assuage my worries (T&A! Young girls!) but regardless it was probably one of the films I was most anxiously anticipating at BIFFF. Luckily, my fears were unfounded. This was not the gratuitous film I was expecting. Unlike some other recent anthology films, German Angst benefits from only having three segments – all are on a theme, all are very subtly interlinked, and all have clearly different authorial voices. The first section, Final Girl by Buttgereit, is the shortest, followed by Make a Wish by Kosakowski and Alraune by Marschall.

Buttgereit’s section is good, albeit a little slight. It opens the film with a very challenging series of close ups of a young…woman? girl? accompanied by a voice over to match, which describes the biology of a guinea pig. It’s revealed that this is indeed a young girl we’re staring at, as she wakes up and attends to her pets. The house she inhabits is a mess, but she pours herself cereal for breakfast and listens to the news on the radio. Then, she attends to the man tied up in a bedroom.

This section does feel a bit more like a sketch than a fully-fledged short, and I suspect I enjoyed it a bit more than most because of the very, well, manly mutilation which takes place. I would argue that, however slight the plot of the section is, it is also very stylistically interesting. The voice over about guinea pigs could relate to any number of different aspects of the plot. There’s also an interesting use of editing that leaves us wondering what’s really happening – how much is real and how much is the girl’s imagination. It’s perhaps left a little too unclear (or maybe that’s just me), but it’s interesting nevertheless.

Kosakowski’s segment opens with a deaf and dumb couple on a date of sorts, exploring an abandoned building. The man gives the woman a gift of a necklace, explains that it was his grandmother’s, and tells her the story of how the necklace had helped her escape from Nazis. Inside the abandoned building the couple are attacked by a group of racist and terrifying thugs, who react particularly badly upon discovering the couple have Polish names (though, as they point out, they’re German). As the attack grows increasingly violent, the old necklace might hold the key to saving themselves from this situation – or it might doom them entirely.

Kosakowski’s segment of the film is by far my favourite. It felt, to me, to be the most genuinely transgressive of all three segments, by tackling head on not only notions of racism, but of nationhood, history and violence as well. There is a particularly powerful scene which managed to silence the rowdy BIFFF crowd (and this was by far the busiest screening I attended there). A character essentially gives a powerful but complex speech about persecution to another character, shot in such a way that the speech is delivered almost directly into camera. The horror of this section is as much the cruel – and clever – sting in the tale, as much it is the violence which has preceded it. To learn that much of this violence, enacted by the gang as they torture the couple, came from Kosakowski’s own experience of being attacked for being Polish retrospectively made it all the more powerful. This is, for me, the stand out segment of German Angst.

Closing the film is the longest segment. A man has recently reconciled with his girlfriend. He recounts to her the strange events that happened to him after their abrupt break-up. Drowning his sorrows in drink and taking himself to a strange club, the man instantly makes a connection with an attractive dancer. This leads him to join a hedonistic cult, where a drug is administered in order to experience ultimate sexual pleasure – the only proviso being that a tight blindfold must be in place at all times. Of course, our man peeks, and finds himself trapped in a spiral of events that irrevocably change his life.

As the synopsis might suggest, Marschall’s segment is the T&A section of the film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it is a tale obsessed with excess of all kinds. Like with Masks, the strength here is the visual style, and it’s clearly what Marschall excels at. The characters are either plunged in deep darknesses or bathed in lush colours. The plot, however, is very meandering, and for me the segment felt over-long. This feeling was not helped by what seemed to be a strange sound mix, which made it very difficult to understand what the characters were saying (this segment is in English), especially the unusually deep-voiced leading man, Milton Welsh. While Marschall’s segment is probably my least favourite, it is not without its strengths, and certainly once things get weird – and they do get very weird – the segment comes into its own.

Overall, German Angst was a surprising and fascinating experience. The film really came across as a true collaborative effort, even though each director was given his own time to shine. Unless there really are three more as talented horror filmmakers in Germany, I do hope they steer clear of a sequel, and leave this as an impressive testament to three horror filmmaking talents.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Later this year Takashi Miike returns with Yakuza Apocalypse, pitting the titular gangsters against vampires. I don’t wish to suggest that Miike’s been somewhat pipped to the post, but Hiroshi Shinagawa’s Deadman Inferno also pits the fearsome Yakuza against the undead – only in this film it’s zombies causing mayhem. As we’ve seen from the recent trailer to Miike’s film, pitting yakuza against the undead can only be batshit insanity, and Shinagawa’s film very much takes that approach as well.

Takashi (Shingo Tsurumi), a yakuza, has just been released from prison. His teenage daughter, Hyuga (Maika Yamamoto), who hasn’t seen him since she was a little girl, has run away with a friend to Z-island in order to avoid him. Unfortunately for the girls, Takashi and his yakuza cohort, including his estranged wife and the big boss Hiroya Munakata (Sho Aikawa), the formerly dead inhabitants of Z-island are reanimating and wreaking havoc. Teaming up with uninfected islanders, will anyone escape the zombie horde alive and uninfected?

My first thoughts while watching Deadman Inferno was ‘gosh, this looks a bit cheap’ – followed, a few minutes later, by ‘where the heck is this going’. Luckily there is a scene not too long into the film that completely got me on side and won me over – a scene in which two runaway schoolgirls randomly decide to goad and kick the shit out of some local ne’erdowells. I am naught if not predicable. A bored local cop tracks them down and arrests them, and the ensuing interview is both inappropriately hilarious and somehow quite sweet. It sets the tone for the rest of the film – bizarre but extremely likeable characters are placed in ridiculous situations, and madness ensues.

The slight cheapness of the film doesn’t really matter. It’s well-acted and well-directed, and the zombies are done well enough to not distract. The action is, in fact, very well handled. The presentation of the zombies is very knowing, and this contributes well to the humour. A doctor on the island escapes an infected hospital only to stop, turn back to the hospital and wonder aloud, “Which is it, walkers or runners?” – and his query is soon answered. Lines such as “A yakuza is eating that cop!” aren’t quite so funny taken out of context, but I was chuckling so much to myself while watching the film the person next to me in the BIFFF screening room had to check what I was watching.

There’s a particular sequence which is especially brilliant, which encapsulates the different ways in which the film was entertaining to me. The yakuza have landed on the island and realised everything’s gone very wrong. Teamed up with the doctor, the cop and only one schoolgirl (they misplaced the daughter), Takashi sets about explaining to the underworked cop what he should be doing to call in the emergency to the mainland. But then there’s the small matter of trying to explain the situation without using the word ‘zombie’. They all have a go and they all fail to convince the operator that they’re not pranksters. It’s a glorious scene, showcasing excellent comic performances and a tight script. If only all zombie comedies were so self-aware and unpretentious about it.

This is another film that manages to be quite sweet and a bit moving in amongst the mayhem, particularly once father and daughter are reunited, and through the use of flashbacks. Over-ridingly though the film is an incredibly funny take on a very familiar plot, and in ensuring the characters are likeable and well developed, that familiar plot never seems tired. Of course, stick a yakuza boss on a motorbike and brandishing a katana at a whole load of zombies, and I’m very likely to enjoy myself. I hadn’t heard of Deadman Inferno before seeing it at BIFFF, and it’s certainly stayed in mind as a highlight of the festival for me. This is an absolute gem of a film that shouldn’t be missed.

Deadman Inferno is released in Japan in May – and hopefully elsewhere soon!

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Look, okay. I’ve got a thing for South Korea at the moment. I’ve gone full fangirl over K-pop, and South Korean cuisine seems to have awoken my inner chef (she’s not a very good one). We all know that South Korea makes some of the best cinematic thrillers, so plonk me in the middle of a festival which is showing loads of them, and too right I tried to see as many as I could. I suppose an argument could be made that these films aren’t necessarily even genre films, but given the successes (and excesses) of the likes of Oldboy, I think that Korean thrillers might even be considered a distinct genre of themselves, set apart from other, more anaemic thrillers.

One on One (Kim Ki-duk, 2014)

I’m not sure if One on One actually qualifies as what I’d normally call a ‘Korean thriller’, but thrilling it is, and it sure is very Korean. I’ve not seen any of Kim Ki-Duk’s previous films (Moebius is sitting on my shelf, begging to be watched), but he’s a filmmaker I know from reputation. Though I can’t speak directly of the shocking or transgressive nature of his previous work, One on One certainly impressed as something of an extreme character study (I mean extreme here in the sense that it is a film almost entirely concerned with character exploration).

On May 9th, a group of uniformed men murder a high-school student as she walks home. Some months later, those involved with the murder are routinely kidnapped, tortured, and released, by what appears to be a terrorist organisation, posing as various types of State officials – the army, the police, special forces.

The film is interesting in two ways: in its socio-political messages and in its structure. The first section of the film is repetitive, and plays out the film’s title. We see a man on a date with his girlfriend. He takes her home, and is kidnapped. He is tortured. A man having dinner with his wife leaves early before being kidnapped. He is tortured. Two men share a drink after work, before one is kidnapped. He is tortured. Then, there are scenes of the torturers own lives between these, which also take the form of ‘one on one’ interactions. The structure does eventually change, as we begin to unfold more of the plot, and dare I say it becomes a bit more conventional as it does. The political messages of the film are pretty obvious and didactic, but they’re not entirely distracting, either.

The film’s sole significant female character is, at first glance, painfully obvious and mistreated, but actually I did feel that Kim, in showing us her life, was offering quite a nuanced and non-judgmental depiction of the character. A particular scene relating to her character made me especially annoyed to be watching the film with BIFFF’s inappropriately shouty crowd (I felt quite the same watching Kotoko there a few years back), but at least my French isn’t good enough to understand what they were actually saying while laughing at a woman being extremely manipulated and abused by her boyfriend.

The film’s ending feels somewhat inevitable, but that doesn’t detract from what is, overall, a particularly interesting and compelling film. I can’t help but feel that if I knew more about the political climate of South Korea, I’d find even more to enjoy in the film.

The Target (Yoon Hong-seung, 2014)

I’m not familiar with the film The Target is a remake of, 2010’s French thriller Point Blank. If it’s half as exhilarating as Yoon’s film, then I must seek it out immediately and buckle up for another thrill-ride. An ex-mercenary, Yeo-hoon, is framed for murder and ends up in the hospital. The doctor attending to him, Tae-Joon, finds himself in deep trouble when his pregnant wife is kidnapped and further attempts on his patient’s life are made. The unlikely allies must join forces to save Tae-Joon’s wife and find the real murderer.

The Target opens with the attempt on Yeo-Hoon’s life, and honestly, it doesn’t let up from there. It’s a meaty, fast-paced 98-minute adrenaline ride. By the film’s climax, you may indeed need to be leaving your sense of realism out of your head to fully enjoy the events of the film, but as I tend to approach most films like that, the exhilaration as all the various threads of the film’s plot joined together left me breathless.

Again, unexpectedly, the female characters in this film really impressed me. Although at first the kidnapping of a protagonist’s pregnant wife made me roll my eyes, she’s somewhat beefed up by the fact that she uses her training as a psychiatrist to negotiate with her captor. There are also two female police detectives who, for me, are some of the film’s most interesting characters, and are central to the scene which signals the film moving from ‘good’ to ‘great’.

For a slick and stylish thriller The Target also manages to be quite moving, as various ties between characters are tested and teased out. But, it is of course the fast-paced action of the film that truly makes it stand out, and it’s got that by the bucket-load.

No Tears for the Dead (Lee Jeong-beom, 2014)

I was expecting No Tears for the Dead to be a film more like The Target, but its first half is certainly more drama than it is thriller, but once things come to ahead some spectacular action kicks in. Abandoned in America as a child, a hitman, Gon, is devastated when he accidentally kills a little girl while making a hit on her father. Although he wants out of the business that’s raised him, Gon’s bosses send him to South Korea for one last hit – that little girl’s mother, Mo-gyeong. Gon is torn between his professional duty and his sense of guilt, and slowly finds himself drawn into a much bigger mess than he anticipated.

The most notable thing about No Tears for the Dead is that it’s very well-acted in its central roles, but is really rather hammy elsewhere. Jang Dong-gun manages to make Gon likeable, and makes his sense of guilt and trauma truly palpable. The same can be said for Lee Min-hee as Mo-gyeong, who not only grieves for her husband, and the daughter she sent to America, but also cares for her senile and dying mother.

The importance of these strong central performances is further highlighted by the extremely convoluted narrative, which I admit I lost track of completely by the end of the film. Several interested parties are now trying to kill Mo-gyeong, or Gon, or both of them, and without those central anchors to root for I’d have been very lost indeed. However, once the action does kick in it is wonderfully choreographed and a real thrill to watch. There are moments of humour – an exchange between corrupt investment bankers and a cleaning lady is particularly entertaining.

Luckily the film has a very strong ending, which could easily have been fluffed with so many different threads to the plot and so many characters to follow. No Tears for the Dead therefore saves itself from being unsatisfying by dint of being very well made, so my recommendation of the film comes with something of a proviso that you must be prepared to get a bit lost along the way.

The Terror Live (Kim Byung-woo, 2013)

A riveting central performance is key to the success of The Terror Live, a curious film about a terrorist attack on Seoul. Disgraced TV news anchor, now radio host, Yoon Yung-hwa (Ha Jung-Woo) dismisses a caller on air after he threatens to detonate a bomb on Mapo bridge if the host doesn’t listen to him. The man was not lying. Yoon spots an opportunity to reclaim his fame with an exclusive link to this terrorist, but finds himself manipulated just as much by those around him as he hoped to manipulate the terrorist and his audience.

Ha’s performance as Yoon Yung-hwa is captivating, and it needs to be. We need to, very early on, be on-side with this ambitious media type, and that’s not an easy thing to achieve. He is achingly professional – after bridge explodes and he realises a televised opportunity, he is already well-prepared and has soon donned a jacket, a tie and done his hair. He repeatedly sips from a bottle of iced-tea, and scribbles notes until his pen runs out. These tiny details are visually interesting and are a wonderful shorthand in demonstrating Yoon’s professionalism.

It takes more than that, though, to make us sympathise with the man who wants the exclusive. At each turn Yoon is lied to, or manipulated, or betrayed: by his boss, his producer, other TV channels, the police, the military, the government…his ambition has made him a pawn in the negotiations. It is the terrorist on the other end of the phone line who is most honest with Yoon…and well, the outcome is really quite fascinating for a film like this.

It’s not just the exploration of terrorism (it’s domestic terrorism, I should note) and politics that makes this film interesting, but also the exploration of press ethics. Should Yoon have been so keen for this exclusive? Should his boss have lied to him in order to further his own position? Should any of this be broadcast at all? Nicely, the film doesn’t offer any clear message of what it wants us to believe: it simply offers a situation, and we witness it play out, free to make up our own minds about the rights and wrongs of it.

This sense of ambiguity is what makes The Terror Live more than a gripping thriller – it genuinely makes you think a bit too. It’s exceptionally topical, and I suspect it will remain so for some time.