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Synopsis: Hyun-soo's mother is a plastic surgeon, which makes her very popular among her beauty obsessed friends. Some of those friends are her mother's patients, and one by one, they are freaking out. There is a presence associated with their surgeries. A ghost girl? Something. Something that drives these girls to suicide. Hyun-soo is disturbed by this turn of events, and starts to poke around in her mother's records, discovering in the process dark family secrets. There is death and betrayal in her family history, and child abuse and suicide. Can she unravel it all before it's too late?
Craft: I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, Korean filmmakers are probably the best in the world right now at putting a visually pleasing image on the screen. This movie is beautifully directed and impeccably shot. Even the most soulless of films from Korea can go down easy with the high gloss sheen Korean filmmakers so lovingly burnish on their cinematic offerings. And this film is pretty soulless.
No.
That's not quite right.
Not soulless. Rather it's profoundly confused. If Korean filmmakers have a major flaw, it's that their pool of screenwriters are not up to the standards of their directors, cameramen, or production designers. This film is a confusion of ideas laced together with a plastic surgery gimmick, offering up some stock images from recent Asian horror (the crawling ghost girl is the most prominent) along with a muddled back story that descends into complete incoherence in the end. The tendency of Asian filmmakers to veer away from horror into more dramatic territory--usually an element I don't mind, actually--here dilutes some of the film's impact. Those expecting a take on the traditional fairy tale promised by the title will be disappointed. There is only an oblique relationship, given that a wicked stepmother figures into the plot, though it takes a while to reveal even that. More and more, I begin to wonder if this disregard to actual narrative is a cultural convention, because it's far more common in Asian cinema than anywhere else.
Still and all, that slick veneer of professionalism provides a movie that is a constant pleasure to look at, and when director Bong Man-dae frees himself from the script in order to punctuate his plot with ghastly mayhem, the film has an agreeable "ick" factor, particularly if one has any kind of aversion to plastic surgery or facial mutilation. There's a lot of that sort of thing in this movie. Certainly, this is a more pleasing way to watch such a thing than on late-night cable or extreme make-over shows. With this, at least, there's an aesthetic dimension.
This film is part of Tartan's late, lamented Asia Extreme line, which, unfortunately, isn't producing any more entries for North America. They all seem to be in print, though, so get em while the getting is good, if you've got a mind. The DVD is excellent, even if the movie is arguably not worthy of the treatment.
11/18/2008