People in the Slum: Once a Crook

If you're rich and you get caught doing a crime, what of it? Money can clean up your reputation over time. But if you're poor, no such luck. Shoplift and you're branded for life. So when pickpocket Kim Ju-seok (Ahn Sung-ki) gets busted for petty theft, his life is more or less ruined in perpetuity. He'll do his time in prison. He'll have a temporarily faithful wife Myeong-suk (Kim Bo-yeon) and a spitfire of a son (Cheon Dong-seok). He'll even get a job as a taxi driver. But ultimately, his life is doomed because from hereon, should anything bad happens in his vicinity, he's going to get fingered for it.

Such is the world of Bae Chang-ho's People in the Slum, a film parable in which one young man's "bad luck" seems to taint the lives of everyone around him. Even his mother-in-law dies early. Maybe the preacher who's now a local junk-seller (Song Jae-ho) escapes his shadow but the former holy man keeps his distance. As the crook's former wife puts it "I love you but I'm tired" and "I'm scared something bad's going to happen when you're around." That's why she stays with a drunk (Kim Hee-ra) instead. Misfortune has a shelf-life. When it passes the expiration date, it's a curse. And a curse is catching.

Living Death: My God Is Stronger Than Your God, Bitch!

Kids are always getting caught in the middle of the battle of Christians vs. Pagans. In director Lee Yong-joo's first-time feature Living Death, the unfortunate child is a girl (Shim Eun-kyung) who recovers from a serious illness with unearthly powers that allow her to heal facial burns and uterine cancer then turn around and issue death decrees when someone falls from favor. When she disappears from her fairly dreary apartment, big sis (Nam Sang-mi) comes home to find her then gets caught up in a series of not-so-neighborly suicides, not to mention the religious fanaticism of her born-again mom (Kim Bo-yeon). The local police detective (Ryoo Seung-yong) can't make heads or tails of it all. And you can see why. It is difficult. What's the connection between a kooky security guard who vomits himself to death and a woman who sacrifices live chickens as part of her shamanistic practices? Okay, maybe that one has an obvious connection... But how do you account for the string of murders at the housing complex? Because they're not suicides, they're murders, moron! Perhaps the heron who shows up periodically knows. From the look in that creepy bird's eye, I bet he knows everything.