Cujo in the MIst
the late Lee Sun-kyun gets an unfortunate swan song.
Project Silence
Director: Kim Tae-gon • Writers: Kim Tae-gon, Kim Yong-hwa, Park Joo-suk
Starring: Lee Sun-kyun, Ju Ji-hoon, Kim Hee-won, Moon Sung-keun, Ye Soo-jung, Kim Tae-woo
South Korea • 1hr 36mins
Opens Hong Kong July 18 • IIB
Grade: C
The planned roll-out of director Kim Tae-gon’s Project Silence | 탈출: 프로젝트 사일런스 was shitcanned last year – after its debut at Cannes – when star Lee Sun-kyun got wrapped up in a drug scandal. Not a rape scandal. Not a murder charge. He wasn’t accused of bilking elderly people out of their retirement savings. He was accused of using (clutches pearls) weed! Don’t start me. Scads of judgy harassment led to his suicide in December 2023, making anything he was in even more un-marketable.
What should have been buried instead of Lee was Project Silence, a Frankenstein’s monster of B creature features – which is a compliment when you remember Godzilla, Jaws, The Thing and The Host are essentially B creature features – state corruption thrillers (which Koreans do so well) and comedy. This is Cujo X Watership Down ÷ The Mist (or The Fog), with no sense of visual or thematic identity. The concept is solid enough: A group of people are trapped on a bridge shrouded in fog with experimental beasts on the loose in said fog. Yes! Bring it! But Kim, in his first film in eight years, and co-writers Kim Yong-hwa (The Moon) and Park Joo-suk (Train to Busan) takes things so deadly seriously they blow the chance to have some silly fun; they of all people should know better. This needs more Roger Corman-style lunacy, or much, much more gore to take it into full horror territory. Kim can’t pick a lane, and the movie’s a mess for it.
2024: the Summer of Housepets
First, let me take back the whole Summer of the Cat thing. It’s The Summer of the Pet. Project Silence becomes the third film to star a house pet this summer, though petty thief and tow truck driver Joe Park’s (Ju Ji-hoon, doing the same thing he did in Ransomed) dumb but cute little dog Jodie doesn’t play as big a narrative role as Mischief and Frodo do. Joe meets high powered presidential aide Cha Jung-won (Parasite and Sleep star Lee, looking far from baked but without much to work with) and his dumber child, Kyung-min (Kim Su-an) when they gas up at his service station en route to Incheon Airport. Jung-won is kind of a shitty dad, distracted with political manoeuvring and mildly irritated by Kyung-min’s pouting. Mom’s dead (natch) and he’s shipping her off to study in Australia. Their side of the bridge to the airport is relatively clear, but the side leading into the city gets jammed when a bus crashes in the heavy fog. Things turn murderous when the materiel in a top secret military transport trailer gets loose and starts picking off travellers. After the first mysterious attack, the survivors huddle on a bus as they figure out what to do. Among them are the usual suspects: an old couple (vets Moon Sung-keun and Ye Soo-jung), one of whom you know has a target on their back; budding pro golfer Yu-ra (Park Ju-hyun) and her obnoxiously blubbering assistant Mi-ran (Park Hee-von); and the mad scientist responsible for their dire situation, Dr Yang (Kim Hee-won). A rescue attempt fails when a helicopter goes careening into the bridge, snapping a support cable and starting the escape clock.
Project Silence is laced with a bunch of Big Ideas that I guess are supposed to give the film more guts than it really has. Cha’s weaselly politico boss Jung Hyun-baek (TV heavy hitter Kim Tae-woo) epitomises the insidiousness of political spin for personal gain. There’s a hint of the inherent double-edged sword that is military science research, so easily corrupted for nefarious ends like superweapons. And obviously dodgy CGI as they may be, there’s something tragic about the beasties at the heart of the story that raises inevitable questions regarding animal rights, testing and abuse – which could come back to bite us in the ass. But then out of nowhere comes a shitload of “comedy” – courtesy of Ju’s allegedly charming cad – that clangs like a MF and muddies up a by-the-numbers thriller that trades in archetypes rather than characters. Of course one of the olds is doomed. Of course the mad doctor is a snivelling coward. Of course the “I hate you dad!” dumb child has to do something dumb to save the hated dad. Just once I’d like to see this rescue fail. DOP Hong Kyung-pyo knows a thing or two about atmosphere (Snowpiercer, Parasite, The Wailing, Burning) and he does great work creating truly ominous visuals that really lean into horror language, so it’s a shame they go to waste on a schizophrenic script that can’t decide on creepy or camp. Either would have been better than what we got, and either would have been a more fitting send-off for Mr Lee. — DEK