Missing 2: Not a True Sequel

I'm not sure what Cho Sung-kyu's Missing 2 shares in common with Kim Sung-hong's Missing. The two movies have different directors, different writing teams, and — from what I can tell — entirely different casts. There's not even a repeat of the plot which last time concerned a serial killer who chained up his female victims and made them act like dogs. Instead, this "sequel" finds everyone playing the murderer: the corrupt police detective (Lee Won-jong) who's come to claim some unlawfully acquired money from his doublecrossing partner at a secluded cabin; a pretty boy actor (Seo Jun-Young) who's resentful of his manipulative agent (Kim Hye-na) and desperate for his big break; and an unemployed hiker (Hahm Eun-jung) whose storing incriminating evidence in her spotless pink backpack. The good guy, if you've got to have one, is a bespectacled goof (Bae Ho-geun) who's giving off serious stalker vibes.

So with all these killers on the loose is Missing 2 the least bit scary? Not one bit. You'll see people wielding knives, scythes, golfclubs, pistols, and treelimbs; you'll see heads slammed, ankles caught in bear traps, and people choked with bare hands. None of it registers. To the contrary, Missing 2 — like one of its characters — asks what is life on celluloid when you're sitting around waiting for something better to happen. Cigarette, anyone? Got a match?

Viva! Love: Harold and Maudlin

I did not need to see Oh Joum-Kyun's Viva! Love. Not this week. Not this year. This "feel-heavy" dramedy about a middle-aged woman (Kim Hae-suk) who finds new meaning — or is it old meaning? — in life after she gets accidentally impregnated by the drunk drycleaning boyfriend (Kim Young-min) of her career-chasing daughter (Kim Hye-na) is infused with a desperation that no amount of chocolate candy or honey-flavored beverages can remedy. No, this expectant mother is not joyous about life and love. Most of the film, she comes across as decidedly depressed, an unfulfilled hausfrau who busies herself by preparing snap-top containers of lunch or hanging up wet laundry to dry. Her rule-breaking romance kicks off in a distastefully gross manner: She carries her soon-to-be lover's passed out body home to the room he rents from her then plays with his vomit-covered lips with her finger. Their inevitable courtship is childlike at best: She's either coyly eating ice cream from a cone or taking care of him like a parent. As to those bicycle rides he offers, they should be an invitation back to lost youth but the way she accepts them is more indicative of a self-conscious grandparent worried about breaking her hip.

The problem here isn't that love and sex can't cross generations so much as this particular woman never stops playing mom while her young man just seems starved for attention. What she's looking to rediscover isn't romance so much as motherhood. Now she's got two additional children: her tenant and the baby on the way. That gag Oh introduces suggesting the sound of her orgasming sends her economically-challenged neighbors into sexual overdrive is either an AARP fairy tale or an Ensure-induced food coma that wasn't clearly framed in the edit. What does feel real is the acceptance of this third wheel by the once-cheating husband (Gi Ju-bong). When you get older, convention seems like a crock. The man of the house hasn't slept with the lady of the house in some time. As long as she's still helping out at the karaoke bar, why not let her recreate and procreate in her free time?

Melo: She Will Have Him by Hook or by Crook

Yoon-Seo (Kim Hye-Na) expects a lot from her new boyfriend Tae-In (Lee Sun-Ho). Even after he's given her a new job at a trendier cafe, a new apartment with less ugly wallpaper, and a new sex life with more than one position, she still wants more, more being the abortion of the baby his old girlfriend (Kim Na-Mi) is carrying and the elimination of Tae-In's legs so that he'll be housebound and less likely to stray. To describe her as clingy would be an understatement. And yet...

There are things to argue in her favor. As a girlfriend she goes to extremes for Tae-In as well. She acts as a housemaid, a cook and a caretaker once he's dismissed from the hospital. She's not afraid to step in when he poops on himself. She'll act as a sex surrogate and teach him to like oral sex (which he wasn't that into before the accident). Does it make him a better man? Not really.

Lee Roy's Melo is people with despicable characters that extend into the supporting roles: an ex-boyfriend who thinks rape can be brushed off with a casual apology, a suicidal neighbor (Yoon Yeong-Min) who wants to discuss her satisfying sex life with her abusive boyfriend, a boss (Lee Young-Jin) who suspects the weird girl for stealing just because... Not a single person in Melo is someone with whom you'd want to have a cup of coffee despite the number of baristas seen on screen.

"Why live when a good up of coffee isn't enough?" becomes the main questions the characters ask themselves. Saddled with debt, guilt, an unwanted baby, a suitcase stuffed with body parts, and a needy girlfriend from Hell, every day proves to be a unbearable burden. And if, on top of it all, you were stuck with wearing the absolutely hideous burnt-orange, knit scarf that Yoon-Seo is apparently compelled to wrap around her throat year round, you too might consider hanging yourself or slitting your own throat.

Yoga Hakwon: Horror Stretches in an Expected Direction

I've always found it infuriating when people carp, "I love yoga except for the spiritual part. I wish they'd get rid of that chanting." But maybe I just didn't understand. Maybe it wasn't the God stuff that was bothering people. Maybe it was yoga's Satanic undercurrents. Yoga Hakwon has now set me straight. A horror movie about a secret yoga practice that promises one lucky student per class the gift of "ultimate beauty," the movie cannily targets the superficial people who take yoga for vanity's sake, not for their soul's salvation. You want a soulless version of yoga? You got it, bitch!

To be the prettiest graduate in this particular week-long intensive, however, is going to take serious work. The five women enrolled at Mi-hee's seclusive, exclusive studio -- as well as their enimgatic, dictatorial instructor Na-ni (Cha Su-yeon) -- are all really pretty and really limber. Plus they're going to be asked to make some major sacrifices right off, like relinquishing their cell phones, refraining from snack foods, and not looking in the mirror every other second for seven days. They must also resist the impulse to take a hot shower within an hour after their last class. Sound easy? Well, it's not. We're talking impulse control, habit breaking, and downward facing dog.

Inevitably, everyone will succumb to temptation in one form or another. Binging will earn the twitchy one (Jo Eun-ji) boils all over her body; a poorly timed shower will drive the arrogant one (Kim Hye-na) to deepthroat a snake. The youngest two (Hwang Seung-eon and Park Han-byeol) are dragged offscreen, presumably to Hell, because they can't stay away from their own reflections. Ah, youth! As for Hyo-jeong (Kim Yoo-jin), the cell-phone user who's just lost her job as a home shopping spokeswoman for lingerie, she's let off easy. She actually graduates and meets the institute's ageless beauty Mi-hee (Lee Hye-sang) -- a former actress who's career ended with the talkies but who still looks absolutely fantastic. Yoga is the key to eternal youth, you know...if you combine it with Devil worship.

Director Yun Jae-yeon's Yoga Hakwon has a pretty cool ending. After struggling to escape the institute and reunite with her adorable if underpaid boyfriend (Choi Daniel) who happens to be making a documentary about Mi-hee's longtime director Kang Hee-jong (Jeong In-gi), Hyo-jeong finds herself released from the institute and walking through a subway station where she encounters rival students that she's were dead. Is she crazy? Is she possessed? Is she stuck in an alternate world that's basically hell? Only a sequel could tell us for sure.

Flower Island: So You Wanted to Meet the Wizard Instead of a Shrink?

Somewhere along the line in Song Il-gon's teary Flower Island, I thought, "Oh, this is just like The Wizard of Oz without the comedy, the catchy tunes or Judy Garland." But you definitely have three broken characters, with self-esteem issues, heading to a magical place akin to Oz as they search for life-changing wizardry — in this case, the wish-granting comes courtesy of a fairly low-key woman with magical powers and a knack for hypnosis. Sad more than hopeful, this trio isn't looking for a heart, a brain and the nerve. Instead, one (Lim Yu-jin) is seeking peace of mind so she can die of throat/tongue cancer; another (Kim Hye-na), for the mother who abandoned her as a child; and the third (Seo Ju-hie), for her "angel" friend who she hopes will make her feel a little less guilty about having sex with an old man as a way to raise money to buy her daughter a piano.

As in the Emerald City, no one gets what they've asked for exactly but they do return to the real world a little less troubled (although in one case, a little less troubled happens to mean dead). Shot on a digital camera, Flower Island feels somewhat insolent because its hand-held P.O.V. is often obstructed and its actors look directly at the lens, sometimes because one of the characters happens to be an amateur videographer and sometimes just because. That former conceit doesn't really have a pay-off. The fictional filmmaker's shots aren't that different from those by the actual one and there's no point-of-view epiphany, notwithstanding the blurred image of a maternal doppelganger who appears on the beach at the same moment that the cancer lady is about to disappear mid-air via a pair of cardboard angel-wings. I like the spirit behind making a low-budget film with little more than an idea and a handful of game actors. I'm less into a slack editorial process that permits scenes to wander willy-nily and a storyline that for all its grief never triggers a well-earned tear. Every character cries; one of them screams. As to the audience, we're left waiting for a glimpse at the dark, doomed reality within. At the end of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy returns home and sees Kansas anew; at the end of Flower Island, the main character may be over her depression but she doesn't get a memorable catchphrase like "There's no place like home."