Suddenly in the Dark: Old-Fashioned Freak-Out

In your standardized horror movie, when the pretty young housemaid (Lee Ki-seon) moves into your home, the wife is immediately jealous. That's not exactly what happens in Young Nam Ko's Suddenly in the Dark, however. Here, the mistress-of-the-house (Kim Young Ae) seems positively aroused by her new family servant. The first assigned chore to this simpleminded domestic? Strip and step into a hot bath where the water is tinted the color of urine. "You have a nice body. How old are you?," boss lady coos while splashing the nude girl's shoulders. Later, the wife confides to her butterfly-collecting husband (Yun Il-bong), "Even a woman would be attracted by that body." And she would know!

Sapphic fantasies shift to hypersexualized fears of being replaced. Is her husband having an affair with this orphaned housemaid? Are her kaleidoscopic visions of the two's entwining naked bodies real or induced by the pink pills prescribed by the local pharmacist? And how much is that plaster voodoo doll possessed by the young woman's late shaman mother responsible for the escalating chaos that ensues? The truth is either way, she's going totally bonkers. Even her best friend tells her that she needs to see a psychiatrist. But sometimes being crazy means thinking you're capable of making sane decisions about insane scenarios. And that's just what's happening here. To my eternal delight.