Continuing in a wave of ultra-violent revenge films from South Korea, - crystallised in Chan-wook Park's excellent Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)) - I Saw the Devil takes the genre into brutal, kinetic, and near-to-the-knuckle gornography. Oldboy's Min-sik Choi plays a serial killer, Kyung-chul, who kills Joo-yeon (San-ha Oh) in her car in the opening of the film. She is the girlfriend of secret agent Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee), who then embarks on a no-holds-barred mission to find and kill the man who killed her.
It's your standard revenge film, filled with over the top grand guignol-like moments of gore, as heads are particularly targeted for tense battering, aided by the frenzied camera. But what makes these moments far more ferocious is the fact that between these contained flourishes of violence are connected with the more serene, delicate moments - it can become jarring. However, the use of this technique is an easy trick, and this is the issue with most films by Jee-woon Kim. Kim has that post-MTV generation paradox, - with its influence of short cuts fast camera movements, and stylisation - the content is largely left behind in favour of style. Since the 1980's, a film's look has often been more important than a message, or at least string narrative cinema.
The fact that Kim, and writer Hoon-jung Park have imbued the film with it's knowledge of the serial killer movie into the revenge film is a nice touch, but it is still thematically no different than any other revenge film. In bold strokes, I Saw the Devil, simplistically relates to the themes of the duality of mankind, as the agent digs deeper into an encompassing psychology of hatred, effecting all around him. To catch the killer, Kim Soo-hyeon has to become the killer, bringing him to the same level of depravity. It's a very stylish film, and the filmic touches are often stunning. However, with a rather long running time for this type of film, it does become increasingly nasty, and the beating, stabbings, and torture almost become the entire film, missing an opportunity to explore in an interesting and complex duality of the lead killer/agent.
Bloody Hollywood. Stealing everybody's ideas and Americanising everything (I suppose I should have spelt that 'Americanizing'!). Stealing UK ideas (Get Carter (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Deal Or No Deal), Asian films (The Ring (1998), Infernal Affairs (2002), The Grudge (2002)) and the best of world cinema (Let The Right One In (2008), The Vanishing (1988), Wings Of Desire (1987)) for their own profit! Just kidding. It's easy to say all that without realising that the U.S. are most bum-raped of them all when it comes to other countries stealing their ideas. They've been criticised most recently for their seemingly endless remakes of Asian horrors and turning a quick buck. But the remakes are usually so damn awful that people are quick to forget that the originals are pretty shocking too.
Su-Mi (Su-Jeong Lim) and Su-Yeon (Geun-Young Moon) are young sisters who arrive at a remote house with their father. They are going to live with their stepmother who they both dislike. The sisters are very close, and Su-Yeon especially clings to her sister like a safety blanket. Things soon start to get strange - bruises start appearing on Su-Yeon's arms, a unknown entity sneaks into their room at night, and a strange figure appears at the base of Su-Mi's bed and drips blood from between its legs. Su-Mi believes that the stepmother is up to no good and is trying to mentally torture the two, but then it becomes clear that all may not be what it seems.
What begins as a slow and quietly menacing film quickly loses its grip. The long, beautifully framed shots led me to believe that this would be a slow-burner, and would creep up on me to take a drastic turn like many a good Asian film does. But it soon became apparent that the fact that not much was happening was not a clever build-up, but a way to deceive me while covering up just how frightfully dull it is. I felt like every scene I was watching after the first fifteen minutes or so I'd seen countless times before.
I don't quite understand why Asian horror films all seem to feel the need to include the long, black-haired spectre with one eye poking out underneath. It was first done (as far as I know) in the thoroughly enjoyable and effective Ring, which seem to kick-start the whole Asian horror boom. Then it turned up in The Grudge, which was pretty damn terrible. And now here, a film that likes to think it belongs in the more sophisticated category. The scene where it appears just seemed like such a desperate cloy for a cheap scare that sat uneasily with the rest of the film, and just lacked any sort of imagination because it is literally the exact same 'character' seen before.
An absolute crushing disappointment, as I'd heard so many good things about this film. But I found it unoriginal, uninteresting and lacking any kind of genuine shocks, scares or psychological torment. The film is beautifully filmed however, and the two girls in the lead roles are very good, showing a timidness and mental unbalance way beyond their years. The film was, of course, was remade into The Uninvited (2009), which I've heard is truly, and inevitably, terrible.
