몬스터
Monster
Directed by Hwang In Ho
Starring Lee Min Ki, Kim Go Eun
2014
A monstrous mess. ★
Spoilers, with warnings.
This is a really, really weird movie. Not weird as in an art-house weird way, which could have been fine, but weird in a what was the director thinking making this movie and who funded this to make it happen, kind of a way.
I should've seen it coming because the movie's marketing, which I want to say is very misleading, says Monster is a thriller that depicts the battle-of-the-century between a serial killer and.... a crazy woman. Yes. a 'crazy woman'. In Korean: 미친여자. Like being insane and a woman is somehow supposed to be as frightening as a serial killer? Maybe this lady is a scary psychopath, that kind of 'crazy'. But aren't most serial killers psychopaths too?
The summary, in short: Boksoon (Kim Go Eun) is a 20-something year old who takes care of her younger sister Eunjung (Kim Bora). Boksoon hurt her head when her mother dropped her as a baby (we learn this through a horrifying, Teletubbies-like daydream sequence), and she is slow, perhaps with mental disabilities. Meanwhile, Taesu (Lee Min Ki) is asked by his adopted brother to take care of a girl whose cell phone the brother needs in order to pay off his debts. And being the psychotic serial killer he already is, Taesu kills the girl. He doesn't end up killing the girl's younger sister Nari (Ahn Seo Hyun, who's really great in this movie) though, and takes her with him to his lair. Under some tense circumstances, Nari runs away, and the local sisters Boksoon and Eunjung get involved. And ultimately, Eunjung is killed by Taesu. For the rest of the movie, Taesu tries to find Nari, while Boksoon, with some help from Nari, tries to avenge her dead sister by plotting to kill Taesu.
In the posters above, Kim Go Eun's poster says, roughly translated, "a real crazy woman, goes after a monstrous man". Lee Min Ki's poster says, "a perfect serial killer, goes after a monstrous woman." The trailer is also similar in its pushing for a monstrous serial killer vs. scary crazy woman. It actually goes a step further, adding, "A perfect serial killer meets someone stronger."
Except Boksoon is not the psychotic insane woman she is made out to be. She's naive and reckless, rather. Most of the the movie she appears soft and kind of lost in her incomplete understanding of her sister's death. She is in no way "stronger" than Taesu, who is capable of killing a man with a disposable wooden chopstick. (I am not kidding you. He carries around spare chopsticks so he can murder people with them.) Does she have a stronger will than Taesu then? It's hard to tell. But it's obvious that she won't be able to kill him with what she's got. She's not even that likeable, which made it difficult for me to root for her.
The film also has a very odd and ineffective tone to it. It's not entirely a grim thriller, although it has every elements to be one. There are some weird attempts at comedy which doesn't work in such a dark context and even comes off as offensive. (See the spoiler section below for a more thorough look at this.) It tries to squeeze in these supporting characters who throw one-liners, but nothing is funny, and they're really just in the way of any decent development (and Taesu, too. They're definitely a bother to him.) It's almost crude, how these supporting characters happen and stick around, and even play a role in the the movie.
Despite the disaster of a script and development, the actors are well-cast and both protagonists work really well with what they've got. Kim Go Eun's transformation is fascinating to watch, especially after her iconic portrayal of a lolita-esque high school girl in A Muse/Eunkyo. Lee Min Ki is utterly terrifying. Every time he is on screen you cannot help but worry for any living thing in his radius.
S P O I L E R S
It's impossible to talk about how bad this movie is without talking about some major plot points. First, this is a movie in which an adolescent is killed, and a woman (Nari's older sister) is raped. There are talks of domestic abuse in the main characters' lives. Yet this movie, among these incredibly sensitive and heavy topics, tries to be funny when it's completely unnecessary. It doesn't make jokes out of these topics, but just the fact that there are attempts at comedy right alongside these issues makes this movie even worse than it already is.
And the uncle who started this whole mess in the beginning. The uncle is a rich factory owner who physically abused and raped Nari's sister. Nari's sister got this on video on her phone, with which she uses to blackmail him. This uncle hires his nephew, Taesu's adoptive brother, to get the cell phone. And then the situation spirals out of control, end of which Nari's sister, Eunjung, some hired hit-men, Taesu and his entire adoptive family are killed. The uncle, however, gets the cell phone, and escapes unscathed. Again, the film tries to be funny, as the uncle hesitantly receives the bloodied phone from Boksoon, who has no idea who he is and what he has done. Then he leaves the bloodbath, throwing another terrible one-liner. Unforgivable.
END OF SPOILERS
It's really too bad the movie didn't live up to the posters because the posters are really nice and I really like the aesthetics of them. Literally the only salvageable thing about Monster is the performances of the main actors, especially Lee Min Ki's manic portrayal of a psychopathic serial killer. I am slightly bummed out that I wasted any time on this movie.
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