Don't Buy the Seller: Target

I'm really enjoying these identity theft movies coming out of South Korea right now. Citizen of a Kind (2024) pits an energetic factory worker against a Chinese scam syndicate; Unlocked (2023) finds a spyware expert moonlighting as a serial killer; and now, Don't Buy the Seller (2023) turns Craigslist secondhand shoppers into easy targets for bloodthirsty hackers. All are B-movies that you can't easily disregard because they're dealing with our now-universal fear of losing control of our lives via our phones. Don't Buy the Seller may not go as far as as the terrorized set-up in Call (2020) with its supernatural elements but maybe that's why this movie works. Identity theft, cyberbullying and cybertheft are scary enough.

My one gripe with Park Hee-kon's dial-a-doom is that its heroine (Shin Hye-sun) starts off as a savvy young woman unwilling to take flack from her harrasser and diligent enough to track him down online. But when her cyberstalker pranks her then hunts her down, she loses her autonomy completely. Don't we all hate when a Final Girl stand to the side while the hero-detective (Kim Seong-gyoon) gets the hell beaten out of him by her tormentor (Im Sung-jae), simply as a cliched plot point. How long does it take to find the nailgun or a plank with a nail in it or a shard of glass? I guess long enough to drag the scene out to justify a feature-length movie.

Title Variations: This film is also known as Target.