Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy: Never Quit the Game

I've been reading a number of disappointing contemporary novels in which the main character exercises minimal control of their fate so Kim Byung-woo's Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy is a welcome counterbalance. It's leading man Kim Dok-ja (Ahn Hyo-seop) is stuck in a choose-your-own-adventure narrative for which taking drastic action is the only way to survive. You see, he's been propelled into a scenario containing endless parallels to a dissatisfying online novel that he's been reading and recently finished. Now, finally, he has the chance to influence the outcome — as well as who lives and who dies — every time a new crisis arrives. Joining him in his postapocalypic journey are spiderwebby former co-worker Yoo Sang-ah (Chae Soo-bin), insect telepath Lee Gil-yeong (Kwon Eun-sung), muscle buddy Lee Hyeon-seong (Shin Seung-ho), tough girl Jeong Hee-won (Nana a.k.a. Im Jin-ah), loner Lee Ji-hye (Kim Ji-soo) and former fictional hero Yoo Jung-hyuk (Lee Min-ho).

If mentioning the biggest stars at the end seems strange, well, Omniscient Reader is a pretty strange movie. I mean, when's the last time you heard of a scifi pic in which heartless ETs set off a series of disasters on Earth so they could be entertained by human players in a live-streamed reality TV series / videogame? The metaphors aren't hard to decode. Nor is the plot hard to follow despite the reviews I read online. One villain is a politican! Another's a rich guy! Another's a sexually predatory businessman! And then there's quite a variety of lizard-like demons. What's the message? Teamwork and good friends will get you through the worst of times. And let's not forget the small joys that come when little kids mind-control oversized praying mantises.

Intimate Strangers: Fickle iPhones

How dumb is it to play a tell-all smart phone game with your nearest and dearest? Pretty dumb if you've got anything to hide, as do all the vivacious guests at this increasingly tense housewarming party where each has foolishly agreed to share any incoming messages or calls with everyone else at the table. They're not the first to make this mistake either. Director Lee J. Q.'s Intimate Strangers was inspired by Paolo Genovese's award-winning Italian movie Perfect Strangers (2016) which already had Álex de la Iglesia's Spanish variation of 2017 to its credit. (An American remake seems inevitable!) So if these old friends in South Korea had simply had a regularly scheduled movie night, they might have avoided a series of life-changing tragedies. Instead, they're about to have their real selves exposed in a single evening.

The big-hearted plastic surgeon (Cho Jin-woong) is involved in dicey business propositions; the brittle psychiatrist (Kim Ji-soo) is estranged from her teenage daughter; a bossy lawyer (Yoo Hae-Jin) is having a virtual "fling"; an amateur poet (Yum Jung-Ah) has a serious drinking problem. Et cetera, et cetera. Not everyone feels like a liar and a cheat. A sensible veterinarian (Song Ha-yoon), though the youngest, seems the most mature of the bunch while the one stag member at dinner, a quintessential drop-out (Yoon Kyung-ho) has been living a lie. Spoiler ahead: He's gay!

Winning attributes aside, none of them is particularly likable. Perhaps that's because they're way too real! A deflating ending in which we see what their lives would have been like if they had not accepted the far-from-innocent smartphone challenge undoes much of the power of what's preceded. Is screenwriter Bae Se-yeong telling us that we're better of not being honest with each other? I would have preferred he had pursued another question he introduced early in the movie. Are women more like iPhones and men more like Androids? As for me, I oft times feel like a Blackberry.