It's a Long Process

 

I love South Korean horror films. I just wish every one wasn't always a good 20 minutes longer than it needs to be.

Quick Plot: Shamans Hwa-rim and Bong-gil are very good at their jobs, but when a wealthy family hires them to help their haunted baby, they need some backup. Hwa-rim calls in acclaimed geomancer Kim Sang-deok and his trusty mortician Yeong-geun to locate the family patriarch's grave and move the body to a consecrated location. 

With bad rain, the group decides to wait out the reburial in a nearby and nearly empty monastery. As they rest up after a wild ritual and satisfying noodle dinner, Yeong-geun's local contact decides to do some grave robbing. Naturally, a very angry, very large demon gets released in the process.

There's a lot more that happens in Exhuma, mostly because this movie is 150+ minutes long. I had been hearing good things about the film but couldn't quite fathom the day where I summoned that time block, so it felt mandatory to watch it when I ended up on a plane with a more robust selection of in-flight entertainment. I had nowhere to go.

I'll say about Exhuma what I said last year about Searching, but for very different reasons: this is indeed the perfect plane movie. Searching worked in that way because it was intended to feel like the POV of a laptop. For Exhuma, it's simply the best way to force yourself to sit down for nearly three hours and commit to one story.

This isn't to say Exhuma drags. It's more that it simply feels like too much movie. We shift so many times, from cool millenial shamans to Japanese colonial ghosts to suicidal hauntees and so much more. As three separate 45-minute films, Exhuma is deeply enjoyable. But when assembled together, it doesn't feel epic in scale...just very long. 

High Points

I love a mixed-generation genre film, and one of Exhuma's strengths is how the very cool and young Kim Go-eun and the retirement-ready Choi Min-sik play off each other. It's more complex than a father/daughter-ish dynamic, as they represent different eras and angles on how to manage the supernatural. To watch how they work together on it is genuinely fascinating

Low Points

For a movie this long (TWO AND A HALF FULL HOURS) it feels especially frustrating to leave the fate of a character up in the air. Our poor unlucky gravedigger who encounters the human-headed snake and comes down with a debilitating, I don't know, ghost sickness, is last seen struggling to breathe in a dank apartment. The fact that we never return to him or learn of his fate feels either lazy or kind of disrespectful, as if a working class character doesn't need resolution

Lessons Learned

Eerie days call for hot soup

A fox at a gravesite is an ominous sign

No high floor hotel should ever allow for human-sized windows

Rent/Bury/Buy

Exhuma is not a movie I'll go back to, but I'm glad I watched it. It's GOOD, not great, and if sprawling Korean ghost stories interest you, then I can't recommend it enough. But if you see that running time and wince, I can't argue that it justifies taking up that much of your time. Then again, if you happen to be flying cross-country, it's an easy way to keep you busy in between tiny bags of pretzels. 

Shoe Goes There

 

As we continue honoring horror films that feature vertically challenged villains in the month of February (as one is wont to do), I find myself hitting against my first real existential question: does an object that one wears to become TALLER still fit the category? 

Quick Plot: Two teen girls are waiting in an empty subway tunnel when they discover a pair of lonely, flattering hot pink pumps. Like traveling pants, the shoes seem to be the perfect size for both young ladies, causing an immediate brawl over who is the rightful owner. As the victor stalks off, an invisible force follows at her ankles and, well, takes off a few inches.

Elsewhere in Seoul, an unhappy mother/wife named Sun-jae walks out on her distant husband after she discovers his affair. Sun-jae moves her young daughter Tae-su into a questionable apartment (amenities include a wacky old lady who lives in the basement) to start her new life. While riding home on the metro, Sun-jae stumbles upon a familiar pair of heels.

Sun-jae seems to be on the right track rebuilding her life. Her divorce is almost finalized, and she's close to opening her own eye clinic. She also begins a relationship with her interior designer, In-Cheol, much to the chagrin of Tae-soo.

But then there is the matter of those shoes. 

They seem to send out a siren song to any woman, be they 8-year-old Tae-su or Sun-Jae's best friend. The latter wears them a little too long down the street and ends up in an Argento-esque murder scene while Tae-su is hospitalized after a shoe-inspired bleeding frenzy. 

Internet searches, microfiche scrolling, and survivor interviews take us down a Ringu-like trail of discovery. Like many Korean horror films, The Red Shoes feels ten minutes too long, with a bit of a dueling narrative between the shoe's supernatural, ballet-filled history and the more immediate concerns of Sun-jae's very human flaws. Normally I'd never fault a movie for a last act detour into a choreographed dance, but The Red Shoes, dare I say it, didn't really need it. 

Sun-jae is a richly drawn mess of a woman, which I mean as an extreme compliment. Wonderfully played by Kim Hye-su, she hasn't made the best life choices, and that's before she brings home a pair of haunted high heels. Her relationship with her daughter is awkward. She doesn't stand up to her awful husband. She seems like a pretty crappy friend. 

It's actually kind of great! Somehow, mixing her life with a more lyrically melodramatic flashback to frenemy ballerinas in the 1940s takes AWAY from the more intriguing idea that a put-upon wife and mother might just need one sexy pair of heels to unleash something cruel and vain inside. There's plenty to explore, and had The Red Shoes been a little more confident in its core story, it would have been great. 

High Points

My Hoopla-rented copy of The Red Shoes wasn't of the highest image quality, but it was still clear to see how visually interesting a film it is. Director Yong-gyun Kim brings a unique color palette and off-kilter set design to keep the entire film in a slightly otherworldly realm

Low Points

I was never bored during The Red Shoes, but I also never really felt confident that I understood what was going on and why it was happening 

Lessons Learned

Self-pride will always do you wrong

There's an age limit to wearing red

To properly identify a body, one must check the face and feet

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Red Shoes is a messy story, but there's a lot here that I found quite striking. It has a great lead performance, visual intrigue, and some nasty twists fitting of the early aught era but with a slight sense of whimsy from the very nature of this being somewhat of a fairy tale. It's streaming on Hoopla, though the print quality is less than ideal. Keep an eye out for a cleaner version. 

Hear Ye, Hear Me

Hey nerds: give it a rest already. Take a break from that geekery you call reading for a change and listen up: I've got some audio kimchi to give your ears the exact kick of fiber they've been craving.


Over at Episode 65 of Podcast Without Honor and Humanity, I stopped by the virtual lair of the one and only Jake McLargeHuge (yes, best name ever) to discuss a pair of Asian treats. Up first is the 2004 Korean film Doll Master, a somewhat adorable attempt at my favorite horror subgenre by a filmmaker who seemed to have no actual idea of what a horror movie is supposed to do.

And for those who prefer yakuza murder to dolliciide,  crime bosses to puppet masters, rape to glass eye poking out, there's our second feature: 1972's Kinji "Battle Royale" Fukasaku's Outlaw Killers: Three Mad Dog Brothers.

Go get it!


Also in the news: I've been invited to a tea party!

Well, not quite like that. I get to keep my arm and sanity. I think. I hope. 


I don't really know.


Point is, I'm now a member of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers, a ridiculously fine collection of horror bloggers. It's an honor, and I can only hope my wild coffee inhaling ways don't put me to shame.

Now go weekend yourself. If that's a thing. It is a thing...right?

It Ain't King Kong, Except It Absolutely Is

“Okay actors...now ACT!”

This is a line spoken by Dino, the director of the film-within-a-film (and the rapiest film-within-a-film that I can remember) nestled inside 1976's A*P*E (as in Attacking Primate monstEr, or just "M*A*S*H was really successful so let's go with that"), or Hideous Mutant, or Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla, or The Great Counterattack of King Kong, or Not King Kong Because If We Mention King Kong We’ll Be Sued And We Already Used the Budget to Cast Maggie Seaver And Fly the American Cast Overseas On Korean Airlines (they get a special mention in the opening credits, along with the U.S. Army). 

This my friends, is Ape, a 1976 Korean/American co-production that does everything but kidnap Jessica Lange and hold a gun to her pretty blond head as she acts beside a rubber costume, much like how South Korea's northern neighbor's Dear Leader had done with his own favorite filmmaking husband and wife team.

Had it actually done that, this movie may have been awesome.

Quick Plot: Two dubbed and dull Americans hang out on the deck of a large ship, casually discussing the 36’ tall ape being transported below. Their conversation gets mildly interesting--though you would never know it based on the dubbers’ (lack of) inflections--when the titular primate escapes his lazily constructed prison to swim to safety, stopping for about 10 minutes to wrestle a rubber shark. 

A shark you say? Not King Kong fights a SHARK in the opening? THIS MUST BE THE GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME, you shout with all the excitement of cat let loose in a box factory.

But what if those boxes weren’t REALLY boxes, but just plain pieces of cardboard? What if they didn’t have any structure or form, what if they were the base of a box before it was assembled or worse, just one-dimensional remnants of what USED to be a box, much like Mookie's current but wilting obsession:

Is it still a box? With no structure, no interior volume, no life pulse, no actual reason for existing...what would you have?

The answer, of course, is Ape, an 85 minute or so adventure that mostly involves stretches of screentime devoted to a terribly costumed stunt man swinging back and forth. Occasionally he changes things up to dance to the incredibly aggressive musical score, perhaps because it was performed by the Seoul Philharmonic and therefore was the most expensive part of the movie (other than Maggie Seaver's scarves and plane ticket). Why not at least show off what you've got?

Not King Kong roams Seoul, generally acting like a jerk. He sees a snake and decides to throw it, just cause. He stomps on cities where unruly children have invaded abandoned amusement parks, thereby killing their fun. He interrupts a john just as he's about to make love to his aggressively apathetic hooker. He makes extras run at full speed, never giving the director any time to remind the Korean cast that they're not actually supposed to be smiling when fleeing for their lives. 

So unlike most versions of (Not) King Kong, the ape in this film is hardly likable. On the other hand, there's not a single human character to care about either. Sure, the Korean army general seems like a nice family man, but the fact that his children are the only ones in the city that speak broken English to one another raises more than a few suspicions. The American commander smokes a cigarette in a way that probably already gave him instant lung cancer, so why bother investing anything in that guy when he's so clearly died after his first take? Perhaps the most telling sign of Ape's inabilities lies in one of its many mob scenes:

Picture, if you will, a truck speeding through a village, pausing so that all the townspeople can hop on the back. They do this while screaming (and some, while grinning). The camera cuts to a child of about two sitting alone on the road, crying. Cut back to smiling/screaming hop-ons. Cut back to child. An elderly woman jumps off the truck--which is clearly in park and not going anywhere--as other extras furiously (and smilingly) shake their heads. Cut to child. Cut to elderly woman picking up the child. Cut back to hop-ons looking confused. Zoom out as elderly woman and child board the truck. Truck moves. End scene.

I need a drink, and I don't even smoke.

High Points

Goodness, there's nothing ACTUALLY good about this movie save for the story around it, which is almost as laughable as the thing itself. Some skimming of Wikipedia tells me Ape was immediately sued by the makers of Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong, which, you know, also featured a giant ape, big city, blond heroine, and director (offscreen) named Dino. The lawsuit went so far that Ape actually had to include the tagline "Not to be confused with King Kong" on its poster art. Now De Laurentiis' King Kong is its own kind of weird bad, but in the pantheon of bad ape movies, I'd be hard-pressed to call that the winner over this one. I mean, sure, Jessica Lange gets pawed by King Kong, but isn't that preferable to this?

Low Points

I'm not a fan of the 90 minute-too-long 2006 version by Peter Jackson, mostly because it's 90 minutes too long (hey, I'm a gigantic figure skating fan, but even I'm aware that the last thing King Kong needed was...you know...A FIVE MINUTE FIGURE SKATING SCENE). Still, that draggy, drawn-out dull club sandwich of a film made with extra thick white bread feels somehow shorter than Ape.

Lessons Learned

Apes dig blonds

The press really hates it when you smoke goddamned cigarettes, so to HELL with them!

In the 1970s, Korea was home to many statues of tiny cows

It Makes You Wonder...

Hey Joanna Kerns, this was probably not the funnest shoot you've ever been on, what with the atrocious dialogue, deadfish love interest, constant fake rape scenes, and rubber scene partner (nope, no connection to the fake rape...unfortunately), but I really need to know: which was worse, filming Ape or constantly trying to escape being baptized by the growing pain that is Kirk Cameron?

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you’ve ever wanted to see King Kong give you the finger, then Ape is probably the only film for you. 

Yes, it's beyond bad and makes a worthy contender for worst 50 films of all time, but it's also the longest feeling short film I've seen. Netflix's sleeve claimed it was 72 minutes, but the running time is at least 80 and when a good 50% of that is spent watching Kong bang his chest, children play with dolls, adults eyeball each other nervously, Kong bang his chest, children play with dolls some more, adults eyeball each other even more nervously, Kong bang chest, children play, and adults eyeball nervously because by now, they're scared of the ape, bored by the scene, and really have to pee, I just lose it.This is a BAD movie, an incompetent and cheaply made monster tale that didn't know where to begin, started anyway, got lost throughout filming, and ended when someone thought of a dramatic final line (SPOILER ALERT: "I guess he was just too big for a small world like ours"). Connoisseurs of trash will obviously eat it up like tasty dukboki with a shot of soju. 

And now I'm hungry. Thanks a lot A*P*E*. Thanks.

Top 10 Reasons To Download This Week’s Girls On Film

10. You’re intrigued by the eerie love story in South Korean auteur Kim Ki-Duk’s celebrated (if frustrating to me) drama, 3-Iron. So intrigued in fact that you'll hear three opinionated women argue some of its merits and missteps.

9. You’re itching for a tangent where film-loving folks discuss their hatred of misused soundtracks in modern horror.

8. We somehow find a way to imagine a world where both Adventures In Babysitting and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead contained special edition DVD releases that include the only recently discovered deleted rape scenes.

7. We giggle like junkies at the dentist’s office over the wondrous design of the shirtless martial arts practicing, stripper face-cutting villain in Abel Ferrara’s 1984 classic sleazefest, Fear City, a film that includes Melanie Griffith’s breasts and Lando Calrissian uttering the words “Keep the pussy off the counter.”

6. Amber Heard (baggy Daisy Dukes included) in Drive Angry: hot or not? We give the verdict.

5. You can hear my impassioned explanation of how Attack the Block kicks the overlong bell bottom wearing ass of Super 8.

4. I do a grand impression of Tom Berenger’s slow motion battle cry in a boxing ring. 

3. No bra talk this week (yes, it probably has something to do with the rapture) but there's plenty of discussion about boobs (including Melanie Griffith's).

2. It’s free.

1. Joplin (my cat) speaks! I mean that in two ways: her cat voice (a high-pitched squeak of a meow) and her ACTUAL voice that I imagine she would have were she human, i.e., that of a chatty Long Island diner waitress.

(And yes, I'm aware that she's recently been turned into a Sentinel)

Why are you looking at me so funny? Don’t your cats have regional accents?

ANYWAY, head to http://girlsonfilm.podomatic.com or iTunes for Episode 27. It's epic. It's estrogen. It's fine film conversation with international appeal.

Just please, for the love and betterment of Cloud City, keep that pussy off the counter.