Rating: 4/5
Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 15/52 | Korean Horror Films
Kang Yu-jin drives up to his beautiful house on the hill, where his daughter runs out to greet him. His daughter, Gyeong-a, and wife, Seon-hee, come out to greet him after his 17-day butterfly expedition. Yu-jin tells Seon-hee to invite several important people over, as he has made a rare discovery. Seon-hee is visibly disappointed that they won’t be spending the night as a family. So, Yu-jin lays a big smooch on her to smooth things over. That night, the boys gather around a projector, where Yu-jin shows them pictures of butterflies.
Then, for some reason, a slide appears depicting a wooden doll. Yu-jin doesn’t know what it is, but the sight of it causes Seon-hee to shudder. Later, Seon-hee confesses to Yu-jin that the doll upset her, like a bad omen. Yu-jin tells her that he is leaving again in three days to find a rare butterfly that he was unable to catch. Later, Seon-hee’s friend tells Seon-hee to watch her husband, because he might be cheating.
When Yu-jin returns from a trip, he has a young woman with him. The woman, Mi-ok, lost her mother, the town shaman, in a house fire and is all alone. Since the family needs a new housemaid, Yu-jin thought she could take the job. Seon-hee cannot help but notice that Mi-ok has a rocking bod. Mi-ok clings to something wrapped in a blanket, unwilling to set it down. When no one is around, she unveils and prays to it. It is the white doll from the photos.
What is this doll? What are Mi-ok’s intentions? Or is all of this suspicion in Seon-hee’s head?
We're both going to live here until we die.
The cinematography is quite fluid, dollying throughout the house, adding a sense of drama to even the most mundane scenes. Many of these shots center on Seon-hee, providing a deeper insight into her mental state and perspective. Additionally, the film employs Dutch angles when filming Mi-ok, suggesting that something is amiss with her before the events unfold.
The score is eerie and psychedelic, accompanied by shots filmed through prisms to create geometric patterns and mirrors. It also helps mask some of the cheaper effects in some shots, but it does it quite effectively. The weirdness of the score continues into the sex scenes, which makes them feel off-kilter, as if something bad might happen.
The film has the most fun with hallucinations and dreams, pushing the boundaries with dissonant synthesizers, sharp angles, and colors that bleed into the frame.
Kim Young-ae, who plays Seon-hee, is the best actor in the film by a mile. Much of the film is a psychological exploration of her mental state. While, as stated above, the filmmaking helps convey her mental state, her acting also provides the subtleties that round out what cinematography alone cannot say. It’s not like this is a super subtle movie, though. She also has elaborate dream sequences of the doll and Mi-ok seducing Yu-jin.
The family has embraced many Western aesthetics and values. Mi-ok, coming from a rural village that practices Korean shamanism, reflects more traditional views. Seon-hee’s fear is a sublimation of a statement made by one of Yu-jin’s colleagues about shamanism — that, while it doesn’t have the scientific rigor of modern medicine, it still seems to fill a gap that science has not. Seon-hee is the contemporary wife, afraid that the traditional ways will steal her husband from her. The pharmacy prescribes her tranquilizers to help her sleep, which, um, won’t help with the vivid dreams of her husband cheating.
We also get the sense that the old ways are fighting for their own survival. Yu-jin’s colleagues discuss how pesticides are making some of Korea’s native butterfly populations dwindle. Science, in its efforts to possess and know, is erasing traditional ways, so they must retaliate.
Yes, this film is yet another hysterical wife movie, but the surreal filmmaking and grounded performances help it stand out from the standard fare. The ending alone pushed it up a half-star.