Deadly
Han Dong-seok’s over-ambitious debut is all the movies.
the Sin
Director: Han Dong-seok • Writer: Han Dong-seok
Starring: Kim Yoon-hye, Song Yi-jae, Park Ji-hoon, Lee Song-ah
South Korea • 1hr 43mins
Opens Hong Kong May 16 • IIB
Grade: C-
I get it. I do. A young filmmaker weaned on classic horror falls in love with the medium at a young age and decides that when they get their shot, they’re going to exploit the tremendous supernatural folklore they grew up hearing about, marry it to that classic horror and spit out something new and exciting. And maybe on paper first-timer Han Dong-seok’s The Sin | 씬 looked great. In reality, however, it’s a hot mess of “toos”: too much, too many and too long. Han, who also wrote the script (he’s made a short and contributed to an anthology feature), mixes together zombies, Korean shamanism, gangster drama, dance, school bullying, teen romance, police corruption and revenge (I think that’s everything) for a film whose muddled reach extends beyond its grasp. Han has an eye for horror imagery, and he makes the most of his (mostly) single location – an abandoned school – but the end result is simply baffling. The production notes declare The Sin is “presented” to us by the “team of Along with the Gods” but who that team comprises is never revealed. Thems is fightin’ words considering the superior filmmaking on display in Kim Yong-hwa’s two-parter. Whatever it was someone on that “team” saw in Han’s messy screenplay is unclear now.
Dancing
The story begins with an incompetent though critically acclaimed – at Sundance and Berlin, which, okay, admittedly, is a good joke – director (Park Ji-hoon) choosing budding dancer Si-yeong (Kim Yoon-hye) to star in his artsy-fartsy dance movie, which is shooting at an out-of-the-way derelict school. She doesn’t know it until she gets there, but her old college/dance academy pal Chae-yoon (Song Yi-jae) is also in the film. Is there bad blood between them? Who cares. Now, while all this is going on, the cops have been summoned to the school, somehow, and when they get there, they’re concerned that some stolen/hidden drugs (maybe?) owned by gangster Chairwoman Yoon Hwa-jang (Lee Song-ah, Sunny) are getting mangled by the film crew. They’re not happy, but it doesn’t matter because we never see them again. Why? Because the director gave Si-yeong a dance to perform that summoned demons – or maybe spirits, perhaps led to zombiefication, I haven’t got a clue – and everyone ate everyone else. That, my friends, is the first of roughly 4,711 plot twists that take us to a mid-credits stinger that hints at a sequel. Yeah. No.
The Sin has its heart in the right place. Not like IF, but Han can’t be faulted for not giving a damn, or not making an effort. It’s just the hodgepodge of genres and their complementing conventions don’t always gel, most likely because of the sheer volume of genres Han’s working with. More experienced filmmakers would have cut off formats at three, but not Han. He’s got about seven. This is the fatal error, because it turns The Sin into a deadly mix of styles, tones and visuals: wispy ghostliness for the shamanistic elements, hard grey and black for the gangster scenes, exploitation-style gore for the zombies and so on. It’s head-spinning, and not in the right way, and it buries whatever Han might be saying about desire, sin, jealousy and the nature of evil. Add to that Han got renowned Korean choreographer Kim Bo-ra to create the shaman dance (a high point despite being difficult to follow thanks to over-editing) and then had the actor with a dance background (Song) not play her. WTF? Kim’s not a dancer and it shows, regardless of how clever Han shoots around her. After twist #2,779 Han really loses his grip on the story and the dramatic conclusion lands with a thud. Would I give Han more money for a second go? Sure. I’d just make a script editor a contract condition. — DEK