The Priests: It Takes Two to Exorcise

With Halloween this coming Saturday, I felt compelled to see a couple of K-horror films in preparation over the past week. The first, Suddenly in the Dark, has "cult movie" written all over it. Solid freaky fare. The second, The Priests, is even more tailored to my tastes. An exorcism movie! You see, I'm easily entertained by a young innocent possessed by one of the "twelve manifestations" (if you know, you know) who only the most devoted can cast out. Oh yes, Jang Jae-hyun's well-executed thriller is one in a long line of ex-communicated holy men stopping at nothing to rid our sinful world of total evil, inner demons be damned.

In The Priests, the religious duo committed to saving the soul of a schoolgirl hit-and-run by a couple of Italians are Father Kim (Kim Yoon-seok) and Deacon Choi (Gang Dong-won). Kim's been down this road before, although his former mentor has been taken over by a minor demon, leaving Kim to search for a willing if inexperienced collaborator/assistant/sidekick/mentee. Choi, for his part, is a rebel, a novitiate who cheats on his exams, sneaks out of the seminary to buy beers, but at least was born in the Year of the Tiger which apparently is an important credit on his resume. Together these two men in priestly collars must go through the never-tired ritual of crosses, holy water, projectile vomit, salt, rats, cats, and crows in order to get that nasty spirit to release the soul of poor unfortunate soul trapped inside the shaven-head and tortured body of the victim (Cho Flora). Seasonal perfection with a toothpaste mustache.

Suddenly in the Dark: Old-Fashioned Freak-Out

In your standardized horror movie, when the pretty young housemaid (Lee Ki-seon) moves into your home, the wife is immediately jealous. That's not exactly what happens in Young Nam Ko's Suddenly in the Dark, however. Here, the mistress-of-the-house (Kim Young Ae) seems positively aroused by her new family servant. The first assigned chore to this simpleminded domestic? Strip and step into a hot bath where the water is tinted the color of urine. "You have a nice body. How old are you?," boss lady coos while splashing the nude girl's shoulders. Later, the wife confides to her butterfly-collecting husband (Yun Il-bong), "Even a woman would be attracted by that body." And she would know!

Sapphic fantasies shift to hypersexualized fears of being replaced. Is her husband having an affair with this orphaned housemaid? Are her kaleidoscopic visions of the two's entwining naked bodies real or induced by the pink pills prescribed by the local pharmacist? And how much is that plaster voodoo doll possessed by the young woman's late shaman mother responsible for the escalating chaos that ensues? The truth is either way, she's going totally bonkers. Even her best friend tells her that she needs to see a psychiatrist. But sometimes being crazy means thinking you're capable of making sane decisions about insane scenarios. And that's just what's happening here. To my eternal delight.

Sunrise/Sunset: Filmmaking as Tourism

As a former New Yorker, I have a soft spot for a film that features familiar NYC locations. Whether writer-director Ougie Pak shot Sunrise/Sunset in Times Square, Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park, the Lincoln Center courtyard, the glass-boxed Apple store on Fifth Avenue as well as on The High Line and the Columbia Univeristy campus, and the brooklyn Bridge for ease or symbolism doesn't matter to me. Even seeing signage indicating Broadway and 76th Street feels quietly significant. A walk to the Queensboro Bridge even more so. Do it all in black and white and I'm that much more nostalgic.

Sunrise/Sunset's story is admittedly slight: A young Korean man (Lee Kwangmin) -- still wearing braces -- comes to NYC to visit his girlfriend (Kim Woohyun) who's moved abroad with the hopes of getting into an American college. During his weeklong visit, their relationship begins to unravel as his spontaneous fantasy of attending Columbia University is frustrated by a matriculating student (Paik Tobee) who advises him that he'll need to prep for his SATs, not just TOEFL. (His school tests in Korea didn't go so well.) A self-directed crash course at the Barnes & Noble culminates in his prompting Google translator to speak the English equivalents for curse words from his native tongue. At 47 minutes, this doesn't qualify as Pak's first feature. I'd call it a long novice short. You can grade it accordingly.

Clytaemnestra: Trauma Drama

I signed up for the Criterion Collection last month because I wanted to watch two Pasolini movies: Medea and Oedipus Rex. Then I failed to cancel my subscription. So I thought I'd check out their holdings re: Korean films. Frankly, it's not extensive. But among the few movies that popped up in my search results were a handful by Korean-American Ougie Pak. Unfamiliar with his work, I decided to watch Clytaemnestra, an hour-long film about a Korean troupe of actors rehearsing Aeschylus' Agamemnon in Greece. (Notice a theme?) More specifically, the movie focuses on the woman (Haru Kim) cast in the lead female role then demoted to Cassandra then demoted further to the chorus.

Her ongoing humiliation is painful to watch. And it doesn't end with losing increasingly smaller roles either. Interestingly, Pak's Clytaemnestra works not so much because of the anguish emoted by the female lead. Credit instead the performance of her foil played by Jongman Kim. As the director of the film's experimental production abroad, this dynamite actor sustains intensity whether he's telling his cast to increase their energy, drunkenly exiting a post-rehearsal drinking binge, or berating his former leading lady for bad behavior. Even a handwave dismissing the fired and disgraced actress feels loaded with meaning and attitude. Is the play within the movie any good? Is the replacement actress (Kim Taehee) any better? It's questionable. Which makes this film's effectiveness that much more mysterious. I knew the end from the start. Isn't that how it always works with Greek tragedies? Isn't that part of the pleasure?

Through Korean Cinema: A Well-Spent Hour in the Archives

I'd noticed Through Korean Cinema in the lineup of Kanopy, the streaming service of the public libraries both in Connecticut and New Jersey. I wasn't enticed. I figured this documentary would simply present information I already knew. Boy was I wrong. Not only did this hour-long film — produced, directed, edited, and scored by Italians (!) — skip over any movies made during the Japanese occupation because, as one critic put it, they weren't truly representative of Korean culture given the oppression, but many of the directors I'd expected to see featured in this movie were not: no Kim Ki-duk, no Bong Joon-ho, no Shin Sang-ok, Im Sang-soo. As for Hong Sang-soo, he gets a passing reference but nothing more. What's going on here!? Well, clearly, I'm about to get educated.

For Through Korean Cinema does showcase five homegrown auteurs of import. Two I confess I did not recognize by name: Park Kwang-su and Lee Myung-se. Checking out my own archives here at Korean Grindhouse, I see I've actually watched one film by the first Park (Meet Mr. Daddy which made me cry buckets). I've also seen a few by Lee, although none I particularly liked. Through Korean Cinema makes me want to give him another shot! As for the directors I did know immediately, Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso's interviews had me seeing these men anew. I had no idea of Im Kwon-taek's prodigious output with well over 100 movies to his credit; or of Lee Chang-dong's self-punishing apprenticeship as an A.D.; or of Park Chan-wook's very first film which was a box office dud. In a little over an hour, my list of "films to watch" has grown quite a bit. Now how do I track down Chilsu and Mansu?