Three Films Make A Post: There's something in the snow…

Emily the Criminal (2022): This fine crime movie about what living in a capitalist hell hole can do to a person’s moral self (which makes it something of a neo noir, now that I think about it) by John Patton Ford (who also scripts the film) was a bit ignored when it came out last year, unfairly so, I must say. It’s not an outwardly spectacular film, but one that follows the downwards drift of its protagonist (Aubrey Plaza in a fantastic performance) with an observant and careful eye, finding tension as naturally in the set of Plaza’s shoulder as in the slowly evolving plot, and doing so brilliantly.

Project Wolf Hunting aka 늑대사냥 | neuk-dae-sa-nyang (2022): Kim Hong-seon’s South Korean action horror movie on the other hand only ever wants to do things that are outwardly spectacular. Mostly, this combination of “Die Hard without a proper protagonist on a prison transport ship”, a zombie super soldier, various conspiracist plot twists and so on, manages to do this quite entertainingly. I’m convinced the production sucked up all the movie blood in Korea, bloody and gloopy as things get. Kim shows himself as quite adept at finding new ways to deliver carnage for the full two hour runtime, so he deserves all the blood he can buy.

Apart from the typical outrageous and pretty nonsensical plot twists you’d expect (which are fortunately delivered with verve and proper earnestness), there are also a couple of very South Korean moments when the film shifts and twists a little against genre rules, killing off the “wrong” characters at the “wrong” times to keep the audience on their toes.

Winterskin (2018): How much one will appreciate this predominantly cabin-bound movie by Charlie Steeds, working with his usual coterie of actors, may very much depend on one’s tolerance for fake American accents, done badly. For this tale of a young man looking for his father in the wilderness and getting stranded in a cabin with an old woman of dubious mental health is a cornucopia of dubious American accents whose horribleness it is difficult to ignore. If a viewer can make their peace with them – I did, though perhaps with some cursing and gnashing of teeth particularly during more dramatic sequences involved – they may very well appreciate how much good Steeds does in other regards: how tight and interesting his framing of the central log cabin sequences; how much a film taking place in a fake American snow wilderness uses ideas of the macabre that belong very much in the US tradition of someone like Bierce; how cleverly the film escalates its threats and gore to the over the top yet still on budget climax.

In short: The Chase (2017)

Original title: 반드시 잡는다 (ban-deu-si jab-neun-da)

When first we encounter him, locksmith and owner of a surprising number of small apartments Sim Deok-soo (Baek Yoon-shik) seems to be a typical example of the very unpleasant elderly landlord type, being an asshole to everyone he meets, for reasons and without them. However, he’s not at all as nasty as he pretends to be, so he never actually throws anyone out who is behind on their rent and is really willing to help people in his rough-shod way.

One of Deok-soo’s tenants, former police detective Choi (Son Jong-hak), tells him about a terrible suspicion: he believes a series of accidental and suicidal deaths of elderly, mostly homeless, men happening in their town right now is the work of a serial killer; worse still, it seems to mirror a series of crimes that happened thirty years earlier whose perpetrator worked his way up from weak old men to young women. Deok-soo is sceptical but when he finds Choi dead in a supposed suicide the next day, the whole thing doesn’t sit quite right with him. However, he only becomes truly involved when he encounters Park Pyeong-dal (Sung Dong-il), a former, also retired, colleague of Choi’s who shares the dead man’s theory and drags Deok-soo into his investigation, if the old man wants it or not. Outrageous twists are in their future.

And if I say, outrageous twists, I really mean it, for Kim Hong-seon’s comedic mystery certainly goes in a different direction than any comparable odd-couple mystery not made in South Korea would. There’s one - highly effective and fitting in a film about men of a certain age, mind you – twist in particular in the middle of the movie no American or British film would dare use quite this way, out of a misunderstood sense of good taste and propriety.

Event though this is one of the rare South Korean movies that doesn’t turn from a comedic start to drama or horror later on and stays an action/mystery comedy throughout, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing serious here either. The serial killer is indeed doing horrible things, maggoty corpses make an appearance, and the threat level for the characters is considerable. Kim does make light of certain things but he’s certainly setting up high stakes and danger for life, limb and mind for his characters. The mixture of – often really funny – old men humour, thriller, and mystery is very effective, not wont to let down any one side, and later – this is a movie from Korea after all – also adds quite a bit of melodrama. While this sort of mixture can end up a bit of a mess, Kim is always in control of the disparate elements and weighs them just right.

The performances by Baek Yoon-shik and Sung Dong-il are pretty wonderful too, both projecting the sadness and loneliness that lies behind their respective kinds of bluster very well, but also realizing which parts of that bluster still are pretty damn funny.


I also have to say that for once, I found myself enjoying a very twisty plot a lot, Kim timing theoretically absurd, and often pleasantly surprising, revelations so well, they never seem to be too silly.