DVD Review: Moss

No one likes disappointing a friend. I’m sure “stop letting friends down” or “make more time for people I care about” will rank highly amongst the more realistic New Year’s resolutions made this January. Imagine my irritation then when, just days into this New Year, a film of my choosing was a source of both disappointment and bafflement as I met a friend for the last time in at least weeks, perhaps months.

There’s nothing quite like sharing fear. Love might come close, maybe, but fear is much easier to talk about afterwards and grows funnier with hindsight, whilst love’s sadness merely mellows with age. What could be better then, than a horror film send off? Where better to have it than a dark, secluded, silent spot in the wind battered countryside? What better concept for the story than a weird mix of mysterious murderers, seeking salvation from their sins in the supernatural, founding an isolated community and terrorising an outsider to protect their secrets?

I was anticipating a creepy, jumpy thrill ride through shocks and secrets of unspeakable evil. Or something to that effect. Moss is a Korean film and I was therefore expecting it to be free of any British sensibility or pretentious European limitations. I’d heard Korean horror was something to be genuinely feared and was expecting a double barrelled fright fest.

Instead I’m not quite sure what it was we got. It was certainly long. Only just less than 3 hours long, in fact. Moments in the film were clearly intended to be terrifying but I think that Moss’s marketing campaign, which places it firmly in the genre of horror, was misguided to the say the least. But then again I’m not sure what else to call it. The plot is evidently meant to be a complex web of revelations and reverses but I was left, at the end of the marathon runtime, feeling like I’d learnt nothing new. If this is a mystery there is precious little to start with and no more by the end.

The drawn out story follows Yu, who arrives in a remote community after his estranged father (also called Yu) suddenly dies. We learn through regular flashbacks that the older Yu had some sort of spiritual gift, which maverick Detective Cheon decided to harness in order to rehabilitate killers. For young Yu, arriving in an odd and small village of eccentrics, doubts continue to hang over the nature of his father’s death. Did he fall from the land of the living or was he pushed? What exactly was his father doing in the middle of nowhere with this man called Cheon, who everyone appears to worship despite an aura of danger surrounding him?

Moss meanders through themes as diverse as corruption and rape, spirituality and bureaucracy. It never succeeds as a horror because the monsters are in plain sight from the start, with most of them succeeding only at being hilariously inept. One character in particular is so bumbling that had the script tossed him a few innuendos we could have been watching “Carry On Korean Conspiracy”. The lighting undermines any potentially scary moment, even when the soundtrack is trying its hardest to initiate some jitters. The dialogue, at least when rendered as English subtitles, is expositional, dull and far from conducive to horror.

Moss fails to manage a single scare and even more importantly as the story drags endlessly on; it never makes you care either.

I Saw The Devil

It will be a day of unforgettable celebration. The nation will rejoice in a night of endless partying and universal happiness, or so they’d have you believe. The flags and the bunting will sway proudly in the sunshine in the streets, on the most iconic landmarks and the grandest stately homes. All our troubles will be forgotten, swept under the carpet, out of sight and out of mind. Everything will be the best of British; sweet, comforting and clockwork. As the fizz flows and the glasses chink, polite patriotism will give way to unparalleled scenes of euphoria. Derelict dance moves will stumble drunkenly from graves and tombs long since sealed. Like it or not, success or failure, it will be a date etched on the face of history.

Friday the 29^th of April: Wills and Kate shall finally tie the knot. I wouldn’t say I fall into the “like it” or the “not” category. Instead I’d jump in with what I sense to be the quiet, grunting majority; the “don’t give a shit” group. Most of these people will be happy to use the Royal Wedding as an excuse to get “frightfully merry” but I’m not even fussed about that. I’ll just be glad when they bugger off on honeymoon and everyone calms down.

The long awaited date also happens to herald the release of Korean revenge thriller I Saw The Devil. It will hit selected cinemas as the happy couple say their vows and head rapidly to DVD and Blu-Ray for the 9^th of May, when I assume they’ll still be relaxing on a lavish honeymoon. I have a feeling that honeymooners in general, not just those benefiting from pure and perfect blood, will steer clear of this one though. That’s unless they are devoted fans of Korean filmmaking or lashings and lashings of gore, or prefer a particularly sick and dirty tinge to the consummation of their holy joining. 

I Saw The Devil is the tale of a serial killer and one specific family he devastates. It begins with a beautiful young girl trapped in her broken down car in the snow. Sounds predictable right? Well I Saw The Devil will continually take seemingly generic set ups like this and make them raw, real and surprising. The refreshing thing about this opening scene was the phone conversation between the girl and her fiancé, who will become the film’s “hero”.

I can never really relate to characters and protagonists like him. He is a slick and successful high flyer with a super cool job (a secret agent in this case). He is so busy and absorbed in his immensely interesting and important work, that he has little time for the woman he is with; a woman he is lucky enough to love and have this love reciprocated. I’m a man with time on my hands, with ordinary clothes and standard prospects, for whom love is usually a one way street. Add into the mix a ruthless ability to kill and a purposeful crusade for revenge and this is the sort of man I fantasise about being; not one I can readily empathise with.

And yet as I Saw The Devil embarks on an unlimited chase through as many deadly sins as possible, prompting comparisons with such notorious projects as Antichrist and endless cuts on the editing room floor, it keeps the moral implications of its action in focus. It’s not simply your typical revenge thriller but a thoughtful one that questions the nature of revenge. Our secret agent swiftly catches the killer of his beloved, only for him to decide that a monster deserves a monstrous death. Butchering him would cause the beast no real distress, so a tracking device is popped in his mouth and the hunter becomes the hunted.

The ethics of this are clearly dubious and as the killer rampages the Korean James Bond wishes he’d ended it when he had the chance at times. But despite my inability to relate to characters of his ilk, the audience sees the twisted emotional logic behind every move he makes. True justice and true revenge is necessarily brutal when confronted with such soulless savagery.

This is a beautiful film as well as a shocking, horrifying and thrilling one. In its opening chapter alone there are numerous stills that would warrant a frame and a prominent place on a wall. The score does a wonderful job of evoking grief, fear, anger and terror. Prior to watching I Saw The Devil, I had heard about a controversial rape scene during which the victim begins to “enjoy” things. This led to even more debate and conflict over its age rating and release than the countless bloody violence. In terms of morality it is the most questionable scene in the movie, but it did not spoil it.

The film could have done with being a little shorter but I was never bored. Things reach a suitably dramatic climax and the whole thing is well paced. But for me a scene from the film’s opening is the most memorable. It’s just as the girl’s body is being discovered and the forensic teams, hounded by the press, swoop on a spot in some marshes to bag and remove her decapitated head. Flash bulbs erupt and officers shout and the head is knocked from the hands of the forensic team. It rolls shamefully in the dirt. The grieving father and fiancé look on aghast.

 It may be over the top but this scene captured something real about the growing phenomenon of the serial killer. In many ways such barbaric deeds are now common place news and the only way to keep the true horror of it all in focus is to focus on the families and friends. Those who really feel the pain. I Saw The Devil is a gripping illustration of what emotional pain can do to a human being. Life never ends with a fluffy wedding dress or a cup of a tea.