AKA: 4 Inyong shiktak
Country and Year: South Korea (2003)
Director: Su-yeon Lee
Starring: Shin-yang Park, Ji-hyun Jun, Seon Yu

Review By: David Austin
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars (good)

Many horror films nowadays, particularly Asian horror films, mimic one of two very successful templates – Ring (Ju-on, One Missed Call, Dark Water) and The Sixth Sense (The Eye, Inner Senses). Superficially, The Uninvited falls into the latter category (by which I mean that characters in the film “see dead people”). Sixth Sense-inspired screenplays tend to focus more on the ability of the main characters to deal with, and adjust to, the presence of the dead, than on scares and linear plot advancement. Consequently, the films tend to have a heavy psychological component (not coincidentally, one of the two main characters in The Sixth Sense was a psychiatrist). In The Uninvited, director Su-yeon Lee ups the ante, and focuses almost entirely on the psychological angle, almost to the complete exclusion of the supernatural.

The plot focuses on interior designer Jung-won (Shin-yang Park). Jeung-won is a quite man, an ordinary man, with a vivacious and intelligent fiancée. One day, while riding home on the train late at night, Jeung-won sees two young girls still on the train after the last stop. Later, watching the news, he learns that the two girls were poisoned by their own mother. Soon, he sees the girls in his own dining room. Jeung-won begins to dream about the girls, and to have inexplicable dreams about pictures of spirals and fingers in a sewer grate.

Eventually, Jeung-won stumbles across Yeon (Ji-hyun Jun, My Sassy Girl), a melancholy woman prone to narcoleptic attacks. When she indicates that she too can see the girls, he tracks her down, and learns that she is the recent victim of a horrible tragedy where a female friend and mother killed her own and Yeon’s children. Not only can Yeon see the dead, but she can help people to recover memories that they blotted out. Unfortunately, few believe her, and her gift almost invariably makes things worse.

The Uninvited is not a horror movie, at least not in any traditional sense. That is not to say that there are not images and events in the film which are horrific. One scene in particular, during Jeung-won’s repressed memory flashback, elicited a visceral reaction from me, like a literal punch in the gut. Technically there are even what you might call “ghosts.” However, there are no scares, and I never got the impression that there were meant to be.

The subject of The Uninvited is not dead people, or horror. The subject is trauma, and people’s ability, or lack of ability, to deal with it. Yun and Joon are contrasted with their lovers, and their colleagues, people who are more comfortable in their lives, people without deeper problems, or people who have chosen not to think more deeply about their lives. To Lee’s credit, I do not think that she demonstrates a clear preference – perhaps the healthiest character in the film is Hee-un, Jeung-won’s fiancée, played with charm by Seon Yu (one wonders how she ended up with a drip like Jeung-won).

Su-yeon Lee brings an intense control of the film medium to her work. The Uninvited is exceptionally well-made, with tight cinematography and restrained acting helping to create a vividly realistic world. Jeung-won’s world in particular breathes with detail, from his relationship with Hee-un, to the scenes between him and his father and sister. The acting never boils over into camp or melodrama. While Lee’s direction is not flashy, it is effective, and in several scenes she has captured some fascinating imagery, like the slow motion flashbacks to Jeung-won’s youth, or the paradoxically beautiful image of blood seeping slowly from a body during a heavy rain. Lee visually isolates Yeon and Jeung-won with the repeated imagery of traffic and commuting, showing how cut off they are despite the multitude of people around them.

Unfortunately, the supernatural element feels somewhat artificially attached to what is essentially a psychological story. If the entire ghost aspect of the film were removed, and replaced with purely psychological explanations, motivations and plot devices, the film would be tighter and more powerful. Director Lee says that the genesis of the project began in the image of the two children sitting at a table, but nonetheless I can’t help but envision studios turning down this delicately crafted psycho-drama, until someone (Lee or otherwise) came up with the brilliant idea … “What if Yeon and Jeung-won saw dead people?”

Recommended? Fans of psychological and existential horror will enjoy this well-crafted thriller, but others may find it overlong and somewhat muddled. I look forward to seeing more from Su-Yeon Lee, who clearly possesses an enormous talent.

If you like this, you might like: The Sixth Sense, The Eye, Pale Flower, The Fisher King, Rouge, 2046, The Tenant, Spellbound, Dellamore Dellamorte

DVD DETAILS

DVD Production Company: Panik House (www.panikhouse.com)
Release Date: May 30, 2006
Run Time: 103 Mins (the box incorrectly says 96 mins)
Extras: Still and Poster Galleries, Behind-the-Scenes Featurette, Abridged: The Uninvited Condensed Featurette, Trailers and TV Spots, Production Notes and Bios, Collectible Sticker, Interview with Ji-hyun Jun and Shin-yang Park, Essay by Art Black, Spanish Commentary
Purchase: Buy the DVD!

The movie is presented in beautiful 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, and the picture is crisp and beautiful. Sound is also good, and English and Spanish subtitles are optional. Continuing their efforts to produce the most unorthodox DVD packages on the market, Panik House has put the DVD snapper case in an attractive sleeve with an embossed image of Ji-hyun Jun (the only nit I have to pick is that the glamour shot used is not an accurate reflection of the story of her role in it – nothing about this film is “glamourous.” Panik House continues to provide support for both English and Spanish speakers, including a Spanish subtitle track.

Panik House has provided a nice array of extras. There is a behind-the-scenes featurette, a nice interview with Ji-hyun Jun and Shin-yang Park where they give some insight into their characters, an odd “abridged” version of the film (sort of an edited recap), and the now customary sticker. There are also still and poster galleries, production notes and biographies, and several trailers and TV spots. There is also an essay by Art Black on the state of the Korean film industry and Korean horror.

The best feature, however, is an extended storyboard-to-film comparison with director Su-yeon Lee, in which she discusses the visuals in-depth, and in the process confirms the enormous work and care that went into the look of the film.

© David Austin