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rawlinson -> RE: Favourite 250 Horrors (2/10/2012 1:43:19 PM)
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250. I Saw the Devil
[image]http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k241/worldsgreatestsinner/ISawtheDevil.jpg[/image]
2010
Director: Kim Ji-Woon
Film
In the film's haunting opening sequence, Joo-yeon's (Oh San-ha) car has broken down on a lonely road on a snowy night. She's waiting for the tow-truck to arrive and take her home, while talking to her boyfriend, special agent Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) on the phone. Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik) pull up and officers to help with the car. Joo-yeon is naturally worried about taking help from a strange man and politely turns him down, but he's not taking no for an answer. He forces his way into her car and savagely beats her. When next we see her she's naked, chained to the floor in an isolated warehouse, and he's preparing to hack her to pieces. This brutal opening takes up the first ten minutes of the film, and if we think we know how violent and depraved this film will get, we haven't seen anything yet.
When her body is discovered, Soo-hyun takes the news calmly, but at her funeral vows revenge. He takes two weeks off work and sets his plan in motion. Joo-yeon's father is the chief of police and he provides Soo-hyun with details of the four main suspects in the case. One by one, he hunts down the suspects, looking for the guilty man. He brutalises each suspect until he's convinced of their innocence, before finding the proof he needs for Kyung-chul's guilt. He tracks down his man, just as Kyung-chul is about to rape and murder a schoolgirl. Soo-hyun beats him senseless, breaks his arm and... in a typical film, we could fill in those dots easily enough. He goes too far and kills him, then the rest of the film is about Soo-hyun trying to hide the evidence of his own crime. Or he arrest him but the beating is enough to secure Kyung-chul's release. That's what would usually happen, but this is a revenge tale in the best tradition of Grand Guignol, EC Comics and The Pan Book of Horrors, so here, Soo-hyun lets him go. But not before forcing a tracking device down his throat while he's unconscious. Every time Kyung-chul tries to rape and murder, Soo-hyun shows up and deals out yet another brutal beating. What follows is one of the most vicious games of hunter and hunted ever put on film. The morality of the film is interesting. The nature of the beatings inflicted on Kyung-chul makes your sympathy sometimes flip towards him. Ultimately it's impossible to feel anything other than absolute contempt for his character, but Soo-hyun is every bit as much a psychopath as he is. Also, he's willing to endanger more innocents by constantly releasing Kyung-chul and giving him the opportunity to hurt more people.
Many people will tell you this is an action thriller. This is horror through and through. That's not to say there's not some incredible action sequences, the unbelievably tense taxi ride, that suddenly erupts into ferocious violence is remarkable. As is a scene where Kyung-chul and Soo-hyun stalk each other through the corridors of a hotel. But it's not an action-adventure. There's also no attempt at realism here, this is a film where psychopaths lurk around every corner, and where every feverish nightmare you've ever had about those monsters with human faces can come true. That dark and snowy night that opens the film is something right out of a twisted fairy tale, while the hotel that plays host to a Kyung-chul and a few of his equally depraved friends could have Norman Bates or Jack Torrance living in one of the wings. The film is exceptionally violent, but it never feels like it's just torture porn, between the mayhem there's quite a thoughtful take on the nature and price of vengeance. It's not something that overpowers the film, but it's always there, running throughout the film, as we watch Soo-hyun become as big a monster as Kyung-chul, especially by the time we get to the macabre finale. For an instant, as the film was ending, I almost expected the camera to pull back to reveal the Crypt Keeper chuckling away and making a grisly and groan-inducing pun, but instead we get a very different kind of morality lesson.
There was more than one moment that made me wince and want to look away, but the camera never flinches. The moment that made me despair the most was one where there was no on-screen violence, just a warning from a psychopath to a captured girl that she shouldn't put up a fight. The power came from the acting rather than the visuals, and it was all the more stomach-turning because of it.
It's an absolute masterpiece, Kim Jee-woon has created some of the most memorable films of the last decade, but this is his work of art, topped off with two brilliantly intense performances. Hopefully it'll get the level of acclaim it deserves and turn both Kyung-chul and Soo-hyun into nightmare figures.
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