nabokov95

The Wicker Man (1973), The Vanishing (1988), Speak No Evil (2022) - three exceptionally good European horror movies with chillingly dark endings. All of them have been remade by American film studios and this is the latest. I'm trying to imagine the thinking behind the process: 1. This movie has been really successful but it's foreign. 2. Americans don't watch foreign films. 3. If we remake it as an American film Americans will watch it. 4. The ending though! It's really dark. We need to rewrite that and give it an ending people will enjoy more! - Wrong, wrong, wrong! I like James McAvoy and he's excellent in this movie, easily switching between charismatically charming and unsettlingly sinister. All the actors are good. The film is coherent. The plot holds. It's suitably tense with an undeniably exciting finale. On balance it's a fine film but it's been stripped of many of the elements that made the original a success. There was a time, notably the '70s, when America made genuinely outstanding original horror films - The Exorcist, Halloween, The Omen, Carrie - but those days seem long gone. I honestly can't fault this film and I enjoyed it but I'd urge anyone to seek out the originals and enjoy what made them different.

Freddie (Park Ji-Min), 25, born in Korea and adopted soon after birth by French parents, has her two week Tokyo holiday plan disrupted by a typhoon, or at least that's what she tersely tells her adoptive mother. She opts instead for the first available flight, to Seoul. On a friend's suggestion she visits the Hammond Adoption Agency that arranged her adoption and asks them to contact her biological parents and provide them the opportunity to contact her. (200,000 South Korean children have been adopted by foreign families since 1953). Her father (a great performance by Oh Gwang-Rok (Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance)), who it transpires has always regretted her adoption and missed her but hoped he'd given her a better life, immediately responds. For another director this could be the launch point of a predictable feel good movie. For Davy Chou it's anything but. Freddie is, you see, not a likeable character. She's cold, uncaring and frequently, needlessly, cruel, rejecting anyone and everyone who reaches out to her. "I could wipe you from my life with a snap of my finger." The film is cut into 3 segments covering Freddie's life from the age of 25 to 32. For me, the first and last (short) segment were mesmerising but the film seemed to lose its way a little in the second. Park Ji-Min simply dominates the screen in what I was quite stunned to find was her first acting role. She also co-wrote the script. Although not an adoptee she grew up in France from the age of 9 and describes her experiences there, as a Korean immigrant, as "traumatic". It's a fascinating study of an enigmatic character and one of the very few films I've seen that I've immediately watched over again. The lyrics of the song "Anybody" she rapturously dances to, alone (naturally), include "I never needed anybody" and "You can't make it alone." Freddie seemed sentenced to forever remain in the cold spaces in between.

There are two potentially good films here. The first concerns the armed overthrow of an American President so divisive he has shattered the democratic consensus and triggered a military coup (not a civil war), for reasons which are never explained or examined. The other concerns the practice and ethics of war photography, illustrated by the growing relationship between a veteran and a rookie war photographer. In attempting to combine both the film achieves neither. With the lack of any coherent back story it's impossible to know the motivations of anyone involved. A reference to the "ANTIFA massacre" also goes by without a word of explanation. Our intrepid photo journalists may as well have spent the film capturing the aftermath of an alien invasion. With political polarisation so prevalent in the US at the moment around the 2024 election I can see why the idea of a making a film around a second American civil war would be topical but, having created the scenario, the film makers step back from making any comment on it whatsoever, including by way of anything more than a sketchy explanation. The second good film, on war photography, wouldn't require a made up scenario. There are more than enough real wars and real war photographers in the world to justify a much more realistic (and much better) film than this. In conclusion, I'd rather have watched either of the films this could have been rather than the one it was.