Seire: Murphy's Law for Babies

In Seire, superstitions aren't necessarily true 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) 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 plot around suppositions, hallucinations, and bad dreams? Based on Seire, I'd say, "If you like."