✦Elzary
Cinema·4 min read·👀 Watched 2023.02.27

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As a heavy phone user who's always dropping mine, this one pressed on my chest — I had to watch it in two sittings.

2023 · Crime Thriller · Kim Tae-joon · Netflix

Setting the scene

Adapted from the novel by Japanese writer Akira Shiga. Japan already made a version back in 2019, but its plot differs from this year's Korean version. That said, after watching the Korean one I have zero urge to go watch the Japanese one, haha.

A few (few, few) thoughts

The film opens in first person, narrating just how often modern people use their phones from the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep, with lots of shots looking out from the phone screen — pretty distinctive, and it makes you feel more immersed.

Is the plotting brilliant? Not exactly. It's not gripping, not full of twists or surprises, and plenty of scenes I couldn't help wanting to nitpick. For anyone who loves seriously scrutinizing logic and plausibility, all I can say is: whatever you do, don't take this film too seriously — or it'll be painful 🤣

But the psychological pressure is real, and it genuinely weighed on me — because I myself am a heavy phone user who's always dropping mine, which forced me to finish the film in two sittings.

The pity is that the film doesn't seem focused on character; it leans more toward a cautionary function? By the end I still only half-understood the killer's background and motive — just that he's an unregistered orphan? But ruining someone's whole life simply because a passerby dropped a phone? I still can't wrap my head around it, hahaha (a psychopath's thinking isn't something half of us can grasp).

Why the yellow nail polish? Online I found that yellow in Korea represents hopelessness. As for why he cuts them off — I guess to keep as a memento 🤔

It's a take-it-or-leave-it film, but Yim Si-wan's acting is truly beyond reproach! He portrays an empathy-less, meticulous psychopath quite well — a silent killer with a smile that never reaches his eyes. Enough said, I'm off to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once.

An aside

People who still don't depend on their phones are truly a super-rare species. I have one such example in my life — someone who has unlimited data yet habitually keeps the network off, so you often can't reach them. Honestly, I kind of admire that, haha.

#movie#thriller#netflix
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