Mr. Housewife: Quiz King

Unlike Mrs. Doubtfire, Yu Seon-dong's sweet-natured Mr. Housewife knows that a man doesn't need to don a dress to understand the worth of taking care of a child, cooking meals, cleaning an apartment, et cetera. Jin-man (Han Suk-kyu), the man in the apron and at the stove, takes personal pride in caring for his wife Soo-hee (Shin Eun-Kyung) and daughter Da-na (Seo Shin-ae), even as he hides his role from his conservative father. Yet this hiding-in-plain-sight act is about to end when daycare daddy ends up in debt and see his one viable way out as a game show for stay-at-home moms — a program where his talent agent buddy (Kong Hyeong-jin) happens to have some connections. A master of trivia, Jin-man dolls up in drag to qualify as a contestant then rips off his wig after getting goosed in the elevator. Whether skirted or pantsed, he's going to meet with resistors and champions.

Mr. Housewife's wife, however, is on the less-than-thrilled side. She fears his newfound celebrity as a spokesperson from stay-at-home dads as a potential derailer for her new gig as a TV host, leading her to rent a hotel room to figure out ... HER NEEDS! Sympathetic, she's not. That coldness is why Mr. Doubtfire never emerges as an outright rom-com. By the time Jin-man re-proposes to Soo-yi on live television in the game show's finale, she's rebuffed him so often that we kind of wish that he'd find someone else. But perhaps Yu's film is ultimately about second chances. Early in the film, Jin-man gambled away a family fortune, without consulting his better half, so if she can let that go, then maybe we should cut her some slack as well.

Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp: Stop! You're Killing Me!

I'm still trying to figure out why, after the gratuitously grisly murders commence in director Yu Seon-dong's Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp, none of the movie's summer school students tries to exit through a window once it's discovered that the doors are locked and a killer's on the loose. I'm not discounting that extreme panic can stop a person from thinking rationally, but in a classroom of gifted and talented, a classroom where one wall is basically made of glass, does it not occur to anyone — from the valedictorian on down to the class clown — to hurl a desk or a chair through the window? Does no one consider smashing a way out to freedom? Is there no one here good at multiple choice quizzes?

All that studying until midnight has clearly dulled the wits of the braniacs. And unlike the maniac in the first Death Bell movie, the sequel's mass murderer is not self-congratulatorily clever: He doesn't set up a cruel riddle for the students to unravel to save their lives. His "clues," if anything, only make them feel stupid and hopeless: "memory" stitched into a young girl's face; a series of jumbled letters spelling out "memento mori." You can almost hear these youngsters worriedly saying to themselves: Okay, I'm supposed to remember something in order to survive... but what? As hints go, these pointed shocks are hardly helpful. As much as terror has muddled the minds of its victims, resentment has stifled the killer's creativity. His evil-genius machines-of-revenge are uninspired: a motorcycle rigged with blades on its tire; an automatic nail gun aimed at a single target; a vial of lethal hallucinogenics... And while they'd never figure it out if this killer's clues were all they had to work with, what eventually comes to light is that a former classmate, now dead, was the victim of an attempted rape by a gaggle of giggling peers. How they were supposed to remember this, considering that they were neither present nor aware of its existence, is just another prime example of the unrealistic demands often made by the criminally insane. Speaking of crazy, Death Bell 2 has one of kookier outtakes on record for its final credits: multiple shots revealing the film's hero histrionically rehearsing CPR on a dummy. Get ready for Death Bell 3: Bloody Bloopers.