Deja Vu: Flashback to What?

At some point during Ko Kyung-min's frightful fright flick Deja Vu, I stopped trying to figure out what was going on. I stop being worried whether the Elvis impersonator Do-sik (Jo Han-sun) was a multiple personality for real estate developer Choi Hyun-suk (Jung Kyung-ho), whether the camera-blurry-equals-hallucinations experienced by Ji-min (Nam Gyu-ri) were caused by her medication or helped by it, and even whether the missing Je-yi (Jeong Eun-Seong) was a dead deer or a dead girl. Free of those concerns, I wasn't particularly scared by office irregularities like flickering lights or an inexplicably activated copy machine; nor was I especially curious when an apartment's walls were smeared with blood. Who cares if a leading character has recently been knifed or not?! Deja Vu is a horror movie that creates a certain distancing effect that allows you to observe camera angles, sound choices, and plot points disinterestedly. Nothing matters. I suppose there's something terrifying about that.

And now for some questions: Can taking a psychotropic pills simulate symptoms in the fiancee akin to those experienced by the patient? Are all Korean professions tainted by bribes involving fat fistfuls of bills? Does every policeman (Lee Cheon-hee) secretly want to be a vigilante and have unlimited funds that would allow him to rent an extra apartment and trick it out with all sorts of surveillance equipment? Would anyone wearing high heels jump up and down on a hard drive as a way to destroy it? I agree that hit-and-run drivers should be punished but did any of the producers believe that this movie would do that particular cause justice? I'm awaiting some answers here.

Manhole: What's Up with This Misogynist Serial Killer?

This lazily scripted horror movie about a serial killer who primarily targets young women may make you sick to your stomach. Personally, it nauseates me to think what might've drawn writer-director Shin Jae-young to make yet another grisly fright flick involving a seriously deranged man (Jung Kyung-ho), with an endless supply of crowbars, chasing attractive women through — in this instance — the dimly lit sewers of downtown Seoul. And I'm someone who enjoys horror movies! But this one is just so shoddily crafted. Are the flashbacks revealing the subterranean psychopath somehow survived a fire that burnt up his siblings and mother supposed to explain his murderous actions? Why doesn't he torch his victims then? And why isn't he fixated on killing older men if his dad is ultimately the culprit? And how in the world does he manage to be in so many places at one time?

In order for this sloppy narrative to work, a few components must be put into place. You need an incompetent police force — which you get here through an easily unnerved cop (Jo Dal-hwan) and his buddy, a former officer (Choi Duek-mun) who left the force to spend more time with his daughter (Lee Young-yoo). You will also benefit from captives who are not particularly resourceful. By making one victim deaf (Kim Sae-ron) and another, a mere child (Sung Yoo-bin), Shin theoretically makes some of their plights exponentially more challenging. In truth, it really doesn't hurt or help their chances of survival.

Who lives? Who dies? Who cares? By the end of this movie, I had neither curiosity about characters I hadn't seen for awhile nor relief for the ones that were currently on screen. At the end, when a shot of a figure wearing night goggles clues us into the bleak promise of more kidnappings and killings to come, I burst out with my one blood-curdling scream of the evening. I was truly scared... that a sequel to Manhole might possibly be made in the future. Any chance they might call it Womanhole and reverse all the genders?