Beasts Clawing at Straws: Survival of the Wicked

"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means." So quipped Oscar Wilde. And while Wilde clearly didn't have Beasts Clawing at Straws in mind, the 100-something-year-old epigram definitely applies to Kim Yong-hoon's enjoyable thriller. Which says a lot because there are so many bad guys vying for that Gucci bag of cash. Many are psychos: the madam (Jeon Do-yeon), the guilt-ridden lover (Jung Ga-ram), the loanshark (Jeong Man-sik). Others are more like infuriating foils: the foul-mouthed grandma (Youn Yuh-jung) and the jerky manager (Heo Dong-won). Some are just complicated: the indebted call-girl (Shin Hyeon-bin) and the shady customs official (Jung Woo-sung). The only good people seem to be the naive janitor (Bae Sung-woo) and his cleaningwoman wife (Jin Kyung).

If this sounds like a lot of characters, you're not wrong. And they're hardly the only memorable ones. For instance, there's also a cannibal hitman (Bae Jin-woong) who never speaks, and a dim-witted best friend (Park Ji-hwan) who you may quickly write-off as doomed. Yet despite the huge cast, Beasts Clawing at Straws is never confusing or confounding. To his credit, Kim has crafted an intricately plotted crime pic in which your alliances are constanty changing and in a weird way, justice kind of prevails. Granted, in a very twisted manner. Side note: One of the production companies credited at the top is called Artsploitation and Beasts Clawing at Straws more than lives up to that description.

Revelations: Serial Killers Precede the Apocalypse

Director and screenwriter Yeon Sang-ho is shaping up to be a pretty interesting filmmaker. His breakout movie Train to Busan is one of the best zombie flicks out there while his equally delightful Psychokinesis gives the superhero genre a welcome refresh. Now with Revelations, he's delivering new life to serial killer thrillers. For in this strangely suspenseful feature, a recently released murderer (Shin Min-jae) with a dented head isn't the baddest bad guy on screen; that title goes to the zealous, pouty-mouthed pastor (Ryu Jun-yeol) whose mental collapse includes a string of misguiding if career-making hallucinations. Pursuing both men is a newly appointmed violent crimes detective (Shin Hyeon-bin) who has a history of her own with the former and a intuitive scepticism about the latter.

This structural shakeup — convict, evil; man of god, more evil — definitely keeps you on your toes, as we coast through rain-soaked abductions, almost-kills, and ghostly flashbacks. I also appreciate how Yeon has included a court psychologist to inject objective logic into story that's shaped in part by apparitions from the past, like a dead sister, a one-eyed monster, and — naturally — Jesus Christ. My only question at the end was a simple one: What's the powder in those packets consumed by the detective? Is it Fun Dip? Energy drink mix? Migraine medicine? Magic dust? A combo pack? Whatever it was, she might consider seeing a doctor in order to get a more effective prescription.