After you died, would you want to live on as a SIMS character? Or, perhaps more importantly, is there anyone who's dead whom you wished you could still contact for videophone consultations? Kim Tae-yong's fascinating fantasy Wonderland explores the lives of a handful of characters for whom the answer to these questions is a troubled yes. A grandmother (Sung Byoung-sook) and her charge get to talk to dead mommy (Tang Wei) while she lives out her posthumous fantasy as an archaeologist. A simulator executive (Choi Woo-sik) seizes the chance to converse with the dad he barely knew before an awkward funeral he attended professionally. Even the flirty stewardess (Bae Suzy) gets to chitchat with her comatose lover (Park Bo-gum) as if he were spending time on a space station instead of in a hospital. [I'm assuming she had to get special paperwork signed allowing her to create a faux version of her boyfriend despite his continued existence on earth.]
As we watch the various characters struggle with the unreality of losing someone who is technologically kind of within reach, Wonderland poses interesting questions about the nature of existence and the price that comes with not dealing with grief head on. To its credit, Kim's curious scifi scenarios repeatedly reveal that maintaining pseudo-relationships exacts a toll as the interpersonal relationships in the here-and-now warp out of shape. I wouldn't classify Wonderland as a horror movie but the AI substitutions are subtly, unmistakably scary.
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