Wall to Wall: In the Sub-Basement

I'm all for a dark movie, even a grim one. But this Kim Tae-joon thriller is too depressing for me. When a corporate drone (Kang Ha-neul) who moonlights as a food deliveryperson gets buried under the debts associated with buying a Seoul apartment, the accumulation of bad luck, bad choices, and bad living overwhelmed me. By the time he got consumed by his greed around a shady online trade (for which he'd liquidated his mortgage), I had already checked out. I just couldn't handle any more bad news. I also didn't believe that his luck would turn around or if it did, that he'd be able to sustain it.

Additionally, I didn't care. And since this main character isn't sympathetic, what does it matter if he strikes it rich or ends up in the poorhouse. Who really cares if he was set up and someone had put a noise-making device installed in his apartment so that all the enraged neighbors would turn against him. Who cares if his phone screen is shattered and almost out of juice. At this point, I'm only halfway through the movie, and yes, I watched 'til the end. Because the midway point is when the suspense part kicks in. And despite the cards remaining stacked against the hero when things turn mysterious, Wall to Wall does become less of a downer. Because the weightlifting undercover reporter (Seo Hyun-woo) who lives upstairs and the former prosecutor (Yeom Hye-ran) who owns the penthouse have major problems of their own. Misery loves company, y'know.

Seire: Murphy's Law for Babies

In Seire, superstitions aren't necessarily validated but believing in them certainly shapes behavior. The big taboo in Park Kang's horror flick is doing anything unusual or untoward in the first few weeks following your baby's birth. Apparently, going to a funeral or — heaven forbid! — a burial can have disastrous consequences: Every apple you slice in half will be rotten to the core; your infant is going to get a sudden fever; you're going to start committing petty crimes — even stooping so low as to rob a homeless man in the streets. And then there are the nightmares.

Seire isn't exactly frightening but it does disturb. Because you sense that our antihero (Seo Hyun-woo), the young father who disregards the old school houserules of his wife (Shim Eun-woo), treated his last girlfriend (who he got pregnant, too) pretty abominably. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the suffering his infant child undergoes is karmic justice but you don't feel bad that the man's life is going to seed. Seire doesn't make the supernatural feel real, even if the presence of twins does conjure up our sense of natural wonder — especially when they look so alike they have to be played by the same actress, Ryu Sun-young. Instead, it makes a suspected power palpable... which can make for a good movie, too. Can you build your whole film around suppositions, hallucinations, and bad dreams? Based on Seire, I'd say, "If you like."