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Korean Vengeance Double Feature

You could probably do an entire vengeance horror series focused purely on South Korean films, because there are a lot of them. Several of the big ones we've already seen, so for our double feature I went with a pair that were new to us.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) is the first of Park Chan-wook's so-called vengeance trilogy, the most famous of which is Oldboy. I'd actually wanted to watch the third installment, Lady Vengeance, but couldn't find it streaming anywhere. So we went with this one instead, which is one of his first films and it definitely shows in some ways. But I also think some of its messiness is intentional. The film is darkly comedic in tone, a tragedy so over-the-top it borders on the absurd. It's a film that feels very early-aughts, a particularly mean-spirited era of filmmaking.

Anyway, the story is about a deaf-mute man named Ryu who is taking care of his sister, who needs a kidney transplant he can't afford, particularly after losing his job. He tries to donate his own kidney but isn't a match, so gets in contact with a group of black market organ dealers to make a deal -- but he gets swindled and left without any money AND missing one of his own kidneys.

Desperate for options, he and his girlfriend enact a brilliant scheme to kidnap the daughter of Ryu's old boss and hold her ransom for the money they need. And from there, everything you can possibly imagine going wrong, does go wrong. I won't spoil the comedy of errors for you because it really is worth a watch, but suffice to say that nobody in this movie is capable of communicating or making an intelligent decision. Classic Shakespearean tragedy stuff, with a strong class-warfare angle.

Watch this if you like:

Oldboy

Dream Home

Parasite

Speaking of class warfare, our second film of the double feature is Bedevilled (2010), directed by Jang Cheol-soo. It's about a well-to-do and callous banker in Seoul named Hae-won. After she witnesses an assault, she refuses to cooperate with the police and then has an altercation at work that leads to get getting fired. Without much else going on in her life, she agrees to come visit a childhood friend on a remote island where she grew up.

The island is quite rural and backwards, and Hae-won discovers that her childhood friend Bok-nam has not fared well since they last saw each other: she's trapped in an abusive marriage and treated like a slave by his family and the local elders who look the other way while she's mistreated. Hae-won has several opportunities to help her friend, but she decides instead to keep her nose out of it and not get involved even while Bok-nam begs for help escaping her situation.

Ultimately, things get even uglier and Bok-nam snaps, dedicating about a third of the film's runtime to an excruciatingly hard-fought vengeance.

I don't think I've ever seen a Korean "hicksploitation" film before, but this one qualifies. I don't know whether there are many such rural, backwater islands or pockets of country in South Korea, but it's easy enough to see a familiar class disparity between the city girl and the country girl -- and it's also easy to see where Hae-won might have come by her callousness and ability to turn away from other people's suffering, because she grew up in this same environment and let it make her a monster just like the island's elders. There are also some hints of queer subtext (well, and some out-and-out text) but it's not clear whether Bok-nam is in love with Hae-won, idealizes her, or simply wants to be her...but hey, that's the WLW experience, innit?

Anyway. This movie is unrelentingly bleak and unpleasant to watch, and Bok-nam endures entirely more abuse and tragedy than is necessary -- I'd have been happy seeing her snap several transgressions earlier than she does. But that's something I'm interested to keep an eye on as the series progresses: how bad do circumstances really need to be before vengeance feels justified?

Watch this if you like:

The Nightingale

I Spit On Your Grave

Deliverance