Exhuma: International Exorcisms

Anyone who believe that just because I've watched all the Omen movies — including the laughable made-for-TV fourquel, the 2024 prequel, and the 2016 series Damien — means I'm a sucker for most movies involving demon possession would be... 100% correct. And so when my boyfriend asked me what Korean movie I wanted to watch next, once Exhuma had been presented as an option, I was deaf to every other candidate, awards be damned. Director-writer Jang Jae-hyun apparently shares my obsession: His 2015 fright flick The Priests concerns two holymen investigate a potential demonic assault; his 2019 follow-up concerns a cult tied to serial murders.

With Exhuma, the horror auteur largely ditches Christianity for homegrown shamanism to great effect. Choi Min-sik plays a geomancer enlisted by a matrilineal shaman (Kim Go-eun) to exorcise a familial spirit who is tormenting his descendants, across the Pacific and across three generations (including the newborn heir). The feng shui of burial gets complicated when these two and their two wingmen (Yoo Hae-jin and Lee Do-hyun) unearth a casket too big for a human and wrapped in barbed wire. What happens next? Hell breaks loose — with a decidedly Japanese pedigree. In short, Korea's efforts to get the Japanese to leave them alone now extends to the spirit world too.

Failan: Long Distance Lovers

As love stories go, writer-director Song Hye-seong's Failan is a strange one. The two characters never truly meet — she's an illegal alien who needs a husband so she can stay in the country; he's a small time hood who signs the necessary documents. They see each other in the flesh a few times in passing: first, at the Hope Employment Agency; next, when he's being taken away by the cops for selling porn to minors; and a third time at the morgue if you can count that. But mainly their relationship is one projection. She's got a framed photo of him propped up in the room where she lives while working as a laundress. He gets a few flattering letters from her that cause him to re-evaluate his own low self-esteem. Would they have been a happy couple if they'd actually paired off? That seems doubtful. But that isn't the point of Failan which seems to be saying something about the impact of the positive things we do in life, even if they're accidental.

To imagine a better life for Kang-jae (Choi Min-sik) is to imagine a completely different person than the pathetic thug we meet, a man who pulls rank on teenagers at a video arcade and ingratiates himself to the belittling mob boss who used to be a close friend. As for his wife-in-name-only Failan (Cecilia Cheung), the moment she coughs up blood (which is pretty early on), we know that she's doomed. That she's able to salvage a few happy years by grape-stomping dirty clothes and cycling around a village to drum up business feels like a small miracle. Hey, the small miracle is the best that most of us get if we're lucky. If you can make one happen for someone else, please don't hesitate. Cast your spell.

Heart Blackened: One Rich Thriller

My problem with prenuptial agreements is that the person marrying into money is as a rule a less corrupt person than the person who's already loaded. Sure, that fiance or fiancee may be a gold-digger but those who occupy the top 1% of the economic food-chain are infinitely more likely to be delusional narcissists who believe their wealth accords them a certain prerogative when it comes to... oh, pretty much anything. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely but plenty of money corrupts plenty too. You can see just how much in Jung Ji-woo's Heart Blackened, a well-executed thriller/courtroom-drama in which a CEO (the ever-dependable Choi Min-sik) goes to extreme lengths to defend his amoral daughter (Lee Soo-kyung) in a murder case that's left him a widower again. Did his wife (Lee Ha-ni) cheat on him? Yes! Is he glad she's dead? No. Truly, the only thing that bothers him is when he can't get his way.

He's got plenty of foils: a fiery prosecutor (Park Hae-joon) who can't be bought, his wife's videographer lover (Ryu Jun-Yeol) who seemingly can't be bought, and a dogged defense attorney (Park Shin-hye) who can be bought but maybe not trusted. Well, the world is a buyer's market so this tough tycoon is going to use all of his resources to get what he wants — not once, but twice. He'll lose some things along the way — whatever happened to that diamond-encrusted watch? — but you're left with little doubt that if he himself lands in prison garb for any stretch of time, he'll be back in a bespoke three-piece suit off Savile Row before you can say "The justice system should treat all people equally" three times in a row. Naturally, the same can be said about his daughter, although her fashion choices would be more adventurous.

P.S. The original Korean-language title of Heart Blackened is Silence, so this particular bit of translation is strange to say the least.

Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time: Buoyant Slime

Choi Min-sik's career encompasses a rogues' gallery worth of tough guys: the serial killer in I Saw the Devil, the title character in The Admiral, the washed-up pugilist in Crying Fist, and — perhaps most hauntingly — the vigilante/victim in Park Chan-wook's messed-up masterpiece Oldboy. Yet as tough as all these guys were, Choi's character in Nameless Gangster could probably beat them all. It's not that he's physically stronger, more intellectually limber, or naturally bloodthirstier. It's simply that he's a shameless slime-ball who backstabs like nobody's business, an evil Everyman with a chip on his shoulder. Never has an ingratiating laugh felt more like a secret weapon.

Indeed there's something so believably sleazy about Choi Ik-hyun, the wheeling and dealing gangster played by the actor, that your disgust rises and rises each time he gets out of another jam by screwing somebody else over. His one-upmanship of a younger, more seasoned gangster (Ha Jung-woo) is ingenious; his self-serving coercion of his brother-in-law (Ma Dong-seok) into a life of crime is heartless; his outmaneuvering of an ambitious prosecutor (Kwak Do-won) is infuriating. When you're loyal to none, evidently, there's no place to go but up! As the old adage goes: "Poop floats."

Writer-director Yun Jong-bin has presented us with an uncomfortably cynical point of view of every level of society: the judicial system, the police department, organized crime, the workplace, your family, your hometown, you name it. And yet, despite Choi's continual deceits, at no point do you feel, "Oh this could never happen" or "someone would have caught on by now." We've all lived with and/or worked with reprehensible success stories like Choi's double-dealer. He's our relative, our boss, our elected official, our next door neighbor, our social studies teacher. Humanity is horrible.

The Tiger: Your Alliance in Man Versus Nature Scenarios

It used to be that in a person-versus-nature movie, the audience always allied with the human being. The hero had to beat nature or at least overcome "the enemy," although victory and/or survival often came with a newfound respect for Mother Nature's powers. Nowadays, the allegiance is not so easily presumed. In Park Hoo-jung's The Tiger, for instance, less-than-favorable examples abound of mankind's disrespect for the planet and its inhabitants: taxidermy trophies of unnecessary slaughters, summarily dismissed pelts, the decimation of forests, the sheer numbers of militia brought on to capture a tiger who only has one good eye! How can you not root for the big cat with the slayed kittens? Bring on the snow, the rain, the cold! Both the Japanese regime — and the unprincipled Koreans who align with them — should be struck down by lightning, swept away by a river, then swallowed up by a tar pit post haste. Forgive us, Mother Earth. Unleash your fury. It's more than justified!

Then again... That's not quite how you feel during The Tiger because none of the animals are truly animals. They're anthropomorphic CGI creations. Which suddenly shifts the battle to new terrain. For are we really rallying behind the beasts of the wild here? To be honest, sometimes it feels like we're cheering for robots or Chuck E. Cheese rejects. That doesn't feel pro-nature. At best, this tiger comes across as a person in a giant fluffy costume. At worst, he looks and acts like a soul-less mechanical being sent from the future to ravage the humans of the past. He's not alone either. All the animals feel unlike animals. Just watch how those wolves scatter like a bunch of video game rodents when threatened by Playstation levels of arsenal.

Naturally enough, that ever-dependable actor Choi Min-sik turns in a commanding performance as a hunter with outdated morals, a man who respects Mother Nature, the mountain, and the kill. Yet despite energetic support from Kim Sang-ho as an obsequious sidekick and the impressive scar added to Jeong Man-sik's camera-ready cheek, even the great Choi can't make The Tiger feel human.

Leafie, a Hen Into the Wild: Cartoon Truths

When we first meet Daisy, the awkward but cute, eager-to-please chicken who's caged with hundreds of her kin, all collectively forced to eat the same slop day after day while churning out eggs, she's understandably miserable and in the midst of a hunger strike. She hates the farm. She wants freedom and the great outdoors. She's not about to buy into the tripe tweeted out by one especially annoying little bird out to sell her on the advantages of captivity. She's not that dumb! As metaphors go of being a slave to the system, Leafie is anything but subtle. But thanks to a near-death that gets her dumped in a ditch with other bird carcasses, Daisy's dream becomes a reality. Yet Oh Seong-yun's animated feature is not an upbeat tale about freedom. Daisy's life on the outside is hard. She's ostracized for being different (a barnyard animal!), ends up adopting a duckling (another species!), and is considered — frankly — too loud by her fellow creatures.

Does all this rejection and readjustment ever have her feeling nostalgic for her chicken coop days? Hell no! Freedom is rough but nothing is as bad as living an existence completely dictated by somebody else's demands. So she struts around with a perpetual cold. So she can't stay in one of the nicer neighborhoods. So she's living under the threat of a one-eyed weasel salivating for her and her kid. Anything's better than life in the pen. And that includes death!

Korean Film Caveat: The Netflix version (renamed Daisy) does not provide the option of hearing the original voice actors (who include Moon So-ri and Choi Min-sik, for God's sake). I suppose the demand for children's cartoons in Korean with English subtitles boils down to one person. That's right. Me. Yet there may be a much wider market for Leafie which would include parents eager to turn their kids into vegans. This film might should do the trick.

The Admiral: Roaring Currents: Hope Floats Eternal

Not to sound too pompous or show-offy but I've taken to re-reading the works of William Shakespeare of late and I remember feeling very conflicted about Henry V in particular. How could I reconcile my own enjoyment of the play with the historic drama's outright pro-war sentiment? But then I saw Kim Han-min's blockbuster The Admiral: Roaring Currents and it all became clear: They're both underdog stories. Think of the St. Crispin's Day speech, how the English militia had the numbers stacked against them, how the odds-on favorite ended up losing... Now transport the action from the fields of Agincourt circa 1415 to the waters of Myeongnyang Strait circa 1597.* Heighten the drama by having the little guy defend instead of attack. Then picture this: Korea has 12 battleships versus Japan's fleet of over 300.

But Korea also has Admiral Yi (played by Choi Min-sik who I like a lot better than Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Brannagh). Yi's an ailing, wizened, crafty, old leader who values patriotism much higher than survival. (He's not the type who retires early for veteran's benefits.) He may not have the numbers of the Japanese or the creepy face-mask of his rival leader, the Pirate King (Ryu Seung-ryong) but he's got a tactical way of thinking that leads him to torch the sailors' houses so they have to commit to their ships and later plays a game of peek-a-book with a sniper thereby putting his own life in danger so an archer can arrow the gunman in the eye. Yi also gets advice from the dead, who inspire him to lure the Japanese ships into a heaven-sent whirlpool. Spirit contacts can be very useful during wartime, you know? Especially when your exasperating son (Yul Kwon) is still asking "Why is the sky blue" type of questions, despite his age. Famous person's child syndrome?

*Strange coincidences: While researching this movie review, I discovered that Shakespeare wrote Henry V shortly the after The Admiral's climactic battle took place in Korea. Furthermore, Great Britain is about 80K square miles while South Korea is just over 84K square miles.

Happy End: Daddy Needs a Life More Than a Job

When actor Choi Min-sik is good, he's very, very good (Oldboy, Crying Fist, I Saw the Devil). But when he's bad, he's actually pretty bad. Happy End may show Choi at his worst. Playing a blubbering househusband unwilling to assume the domestic duties after he loses his job — and his wife (Jeon Do-yeon) becomes the checkbook — Choi's Seo Min-ki is the embodiment of male prerogative. He believes, he has every right to spend his days reading romances at the local bookstore then jabbering about a soap opera with a lady neighbor all night long on the phone, even when the baby's crying, the kettle's boiling and his wife's catching up on paperwork. He doesn't care if the Mrs. is overextended. He's too busy feeling sorry for himself.

You can imagine Mr. Sulky-pants is going to get a lot sulkier when he learns that his wife isn't just clocking extra hours at the job. She's also working off some stress in the bed of a former beau (Ju Jin-mo) who as she says herself, her nails digging into his back and butt, has "a fantastic body." (Or something like that.) She may be living a life of deception but truer words were never spoken. Plus, since this hottie is the director of the website where she works, we know the dude's got computer skills, too. Is divorce an irrational next step?

That's not the story that writer-director Jung Ji-woo has scripted, though. You see, Mrs. Seo is committed both to her marriage and getting banged. Even if that means doping her baby to go on a bender. Maybe that's what happens for the respectable bourgeoisie who hold family above all. But if respect is the be-all, end-all, then Mr. Seo is going to end-all to be-all in the end. The murderous plot he concocts registers with this viewer as completely implausible and unlikely to fool a trained detective. But said viewer wanted to see Mr. Seo put away for life for the crime of whining. Surely, there must be some country that outlaws self-pity.

New World: May the Best Buffoon Win

I know I've seen actor Hwang Jeong-min before. He plays a deadpan detective in The Unjust, a snooping insurance agent in Black House, and a doomed lover in You Are My Sunshine. He's always been good but I was totally unprepared for just how great he is in writer-director Park Hoon-jung's New World. Here, playing Jeong Cheong, one of four gangsters vying to be the next Godfather of Korea's largest crime syndicate, he gives a performance that's epic in scale. What's even more impressive is how sneakily he builds that performance, starting off as a stereotype -- an uneducated thug who favors knock-off designer wear and sports a Jheri curl -- and ending up the movie's most complex character. So don't dismiss him as comic relief. Soon enough, his character will develop an edge. Then alongside his peacock posturing, you'll discover a sadistic streak that suggests, though dimwitted, he's dangerous, too. But wait! Even that evaluation must get tossed aside as you come to realize that his buffoonery is a pose, that he's quite savvy to the political web in which he's ensnared. If he's not the spider, then the spider better beware.

But New World, sad to say, isn't Jeong Cheong's story. It's the story of one of the underworld's other rising stars, Lee Ja-sung (Lee Jung-jae) -- an undercover cop who's being asked to stay incognito for the rest of his life as a way to the police force informed until the end of time. It seems a bit much to ask but at least Section Chief Kang, the one asking him to act as "mole" forever, is played by Choi Min-sik who can make any plot device, no matter how preposterous, seem perfectly believable. When Kang outwits the other aspiring crime lord Jung-gu (Park Seong-woon), you believe it. When he quits smoking as a way to honor an unlucky direct report (Song Ji-hyo), you kind of believe that too. You can almost believe his final encounter with one of the movie's murderous hobos. Almost but not quite.

Crying Fist: Eyes Swollen With Blood and Tears

In your typical boxing movie, the glory of the big fight depends on the depth of your feelings for one of the contenders: You need to like one guy more than the other. It's the story of an underdog, or of a man seeking justice or demanding payback or earning respect. But Ryu Seung-wan's Crying Fist undermines all that. By building to a championship between rivals with equally tearjerking back stories, this unconventional sports flick leaves you uneasy about rooting for either opponent. Suddenly, both sides deserve your sympathy. Weird!

In one corner is Gang Tae-shik (Choi Min-sik), a former silver medalist who now, over 40, scrapes out a living by letting frustrated passersby beat him up in the street for a fee. Part performance artist, part washed-up local hero, he's a bit of a joke who, more seriously, is going blind from head traumas, even as his wife (Seo Hye-rin) is divorcing him, and his brother (Lim Won-hie) is fleecing him of every won.

In the other corner is Yoo Sang-hwan (Ryu Seung-beom), an emotionally retarded criminal with a devoted, doomed father and a dying, maybe demented, grandma. As sad stories go, he's Tae-shik's equal, especially when you consider that Tae-shik at least has an ongoing bromance with a cafe owner (Jeon Ho-jin) while all Sang-hwan's got is the mentorship of a prison boxing coach (Byeong Hie-bong), who admits all his boys-in-training are like sons to him. Sang-won is just his latest protege.

This all adds up to the climactic fight being discomforting instead of rousing since getting in either guy's corner means abandoning his foe. You almost wish, Ryoo hadn't let the parallel stories converge, that he'd ended with two fights in two weight classes, making each loss and/or victory more personal. Pitting them against each other seems illogical. And yet, it's also what makes this movie so uniquely strange and good.

While hardly a philosophical film, Crying Fist does raise questions beyond who should win... Like why is redemption by violence attractive? How can a natural inclination towards violence be transformed into something constructive? When does a focused application of violence become perverted? When, how and why does violence pay off? Does it ever? Which isn't to say Crying Fist is a cinematic essay on pugilism. It's an effective melodrama. You bring the crying, this movie will bring the fists.

I Saw the Devil: It's a Bittersweet Life That's More Bitter Than Before

I Saw the Devil is a high-octane thriller that's got something to teach if you can hear it over the accelerated beating of your heart. The lesson is this: A successful revenge is a Pyrrhic victory. When undercover agent Kim Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun) decides to play cat-and-mouse with serial killer Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) who raped, murdered then dismembered Kim's wife (Oh San-ha) and many others, he has to deal with some casualties along the way. For each time he releases his prey only to stalk him again, some innocent bystander is likely to get hit, stabbed, or choked. (If you're really unlucky, you'll suffer all three.) Soo-hyeon also submerges himself in a heretofore unconsidered freaky-scary world where mass murderers crop up time and again as if a whole underground network of interconnected sociopaths existed just below society's surface. (David Lynch would have a field day with an American remake!) So while, Soo-hyeon's got high connections within the police force — his father-in-law is Squad Chief Jang (Jeon Gook-hwan), he's going to need to draw on more than those resources to beat Kyung-chul at his own game. You see, Kyung-chul's got powerful allies too, especially one old buddy — a good-natured cannibal (Choi Moo-seong), with a violent girlfriend (Kim In-seo) — who enlightens Kyung-chul over dinner re: Soo-hyeon's "hunter" mindset. This mealtime revelation allows Kyung-chul to turn the tables at least for awhile.

Both Kim and Choi turn in hypnotic performances: Kim as per usual takes a minimalist approach, executing tasks as a form of acting then showing flashes of deep emotion at crucial points like when he's leaving the mausoleum where his wife's just been entombed; Choi chooses a flashier approach, giggling tauntingly and staring furiously at anything that gets in his way. It's a nice balance. Kim grounds the film; Choi embellishes it. I've seen a number of Kim Jee-woon's movies before (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Quiet Family). I Saw the Devil definitely showcases what this director does best: an extended chase scene that's punctuated by artful depictions of violence filled with horror; an adrenaline-releasing thriller fueled by one believably psychotic personality. I'm thinking particularly of A Bittersweet Life which also features Kim as a nearly-invincible-and-unquestionably-wronged man trying to survive amid an army of fists, knives, and guns. I was a big fan of that earlier effort and I'm a big fan of this one too.

Oldboy: Revenge Is Sweet, Repeatedly

I'd always been afraid to watch Oldboy a second time because I loved it so much the first. This movie, along with Save the Green Planet, is why I'm the longstanding fan of Korean film that I am. I didn't want to mess with that memory. I didn't want to rob Oldboy of its stature. In a nutshell, I was secretly worried that knowing the "shocking ending" beforehand would diminish the pleasures ahead. Would it end up feeling like a gimmick flick? Not to fear. Park Chan-wook's revenge masterpiece works equally well when you're clued in to the horrific plot twists. It's still creepy, lyrical, and deranged but now it's also deterministic. That main guy is doomed! Choi Min-sik gives what's likely the performance of his career as a man who, imprisoned 15 years for crimes unknown, is driven crazy by his need to discover why he was captured and confined. He's more than ably supported by Kang Hye-jeong as a blameless femme fatale and Yu Ji-tae as his pretty boy nemesis. The whole spiral downward is stunningly shot, paced, and performed. And does anyone not like perfection simply because they know where it's going? Not me. If an ending's any good, it's good whether you know it's coming or not. The spoiler is a term reserved for second-rate films.