CAMERON COOK
Good Horror: I Saw the Devil
Ji-Woon Kim’s I Saw the Devil
is a strange, demented, and vivid account of one man’s revenge.
Actually, make that two men’s revenge. The film, released at 2011’s
Sundance Film Festival, comes from the exploding horror film industry of
Korea. With filmmakers like Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Mother) and Park Chanwook (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), Korea is quickly becoming the best place to find quality horror. While I’ve heard Kim’s name for a few years—attached mainly to his previous film, The Good, The Bad, The Weird—I Saw the Devil is the first of his films that I’ve seen. And, I must say, of all the films I saw in 2011, I Saw the Devil is by far the most surprising.
I was not surprised by the high quality of the cinematography or the excellent performances (especially Oldboy’s Min-sik Choi’s strangely heartbreaking portrayal of the titular “devil”); I was instead surprised by the fantastic structure of the screenplay and its clever subversions of modern horror tropes.
Like most horror films, this one begins with the abduction of a beautiful young woman. In a desperate plea for her life to be saved, she reveals her pregnancy to her abductor. Kim’s lens stays close on her face as she begs for her life. Intermittently, as she cries for her abductor to set her free, Kim reveals insert shots of the room. There are plenty of ways for her to escape. He teases the future by showing us a window and a door, which is ajar, at the far end of the room. We know she’ll escape. This is how these movies operate.
But she doesn’t escape. While the film begins as a pretty standard torture porn film, it quickly becomes aware of its own predictability. The woman dies unceremoniously. We are then introduced to her husband, Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee), who turns out to be a secret agent working for the Korean government. Soo is devastated by the death of his fiance and vows revenge. This gives us predictable plot #2. However, in this film’s 2 hours and 22 minute runtime, the protagonist catches up with the killer at the 50 minute mark.
From that point on, I Saw the Devil becomes a completely unpredictable roller coaster of a movie. The killer, who is at first characterized as a sadistic lunatic, somehow becomes a compelling action antihero by the end, while the protagonist, who gains our full permission to kill his wife’s murderer, slowly becomes the very devil he has set out to destroy.
The true terror of I Saw the Devil comes from its strong characterizations of the two male leads. Kim’s writing expertly weaves action, horror, suspense, drama, and comedy into every scene and, with his humor, Kim is somehow able to make a vicious killer sympathetic. Each scene brings with it an unpredictable twist, and with that twist, an even more horrifying evolution of the story. However, don’t let the clever visuals and comic timing fool you, this movie is dark, violent, and twisted like few films you’ve seen. I Saw the Devil is one of the most creative and imaginative revenge films of the last twenty years, as it is somehow breathing life into the tired genre.
I was not surprised by the high quality of the cinematography or the excellent performances (especially Oldboy’s Min-sik Choi’s strangely heartbreaking portrayal of the titular “devil”); I was instead surprised by the fantastic structure of the screenplay and its clever subversions of modern horror tropes.
Like most horror films, this one begins with the abduction of a beautiful young woman. In a desperate plea for her life to be saved, she reveals her pregnancy to her abductor. Kim’s lens stays close on her face as she begs for her life. Intermittently, as she cries for her abductor to set her free, Kim reveals insert shots of the room. There are plenty of ways for her to escape. He teases the future by showing us a window and a door, which is ajar, at the far end of the room. We know she’ll escape. This is how these movies operate.
But she doesn’t escape. While the film begins as a pretty standard torture porn film, it quickly becomes aware of its own predictability. The woman dies unceremoniously. We are then introduced to her husband, Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee), who turns out to be a secret agent working for the Korean government. Soo is devastated by the death of his fiance and vows revenge. This gives us predictable plot #2. However, in this film’s 2 hours and 22 minute runtime, the protagonist catches up with the killer at the 50 minute mark.
From that point on, I Saw the Devil becomes a completely unpredictable roller coaster of a movie. The killer, who is at first characterized as a sadistic lunatic, somehow becomes a compelling action antihero by the end, while the protagonist, who gains our full permission to kill his wife’s murderer, slowly becomes the very devil he has set out to destroy.
The true terror of I Saw the Devil comes from its strong characterizations of the two male leads. Kim’s writing expertly weaves action, horror, suspense, drama, and comedy into every scene and, with his humor, Kim is somehow able to make a vicious killer sympathetic. Each scene brings with it an unpredictable twist, and with that twist, an even more horrifying evolution of the story. However, don’t let the clever visuals and comic timing fool you, this movie is dark, violent, and twisted like few films you’ve seen. I Saw the Devil is one of the most creative and imaginative revenge films of the last twenty years, as it is somehow breathing life into the tired genre.
