Now available on DVD
Cast:
Jeong-min Hwang as Jun-oh
Shin-il Kang as Chung-bae
Seo-hyeong Kim as Mi-na
Directed by Terra Shin
Review:
It’s a shame that when you mention “Asian horror” to a lot of people, they instantly think of a little ghost girl with hair covering her eyes, haunting a piece of technology (or worse, simply the usually inferior remakes of those films). Because the truth is, the best imports I have seen from Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc are not even supernatural in nature, and The Black House (Korean title â Geomuen jip) is a damn good example.
Hwang Jung-Min plays Juno, a meek insurance agent who is more kind-hearted than his bureaucratic superiors (he actually wants to help the clients, not his company’s bottom line). Early on, he is sent to a rural town to meet with a client about changing his insurance. When he arrives, the man asks him to check on his son. When Juno does, he finds the boy dead of an apparent suicide. However, Juno believes that the boy was murdered for the insurance, and begins to investigate closer. What happens over the course of the film is best left as a surprise, but suffice to say, it’s not quite what you think.
What works best about the film is how it plays with our expectations, both for Eastern horror and for this type of mystery thriller plot in general. It’s not bogged down with nonsensical supernatural elements, but it’s far from simple as well. And while it occasionally gets a bit puzzling, you will never be left completely clueless as to what is going on, something incredibly rare in the sub-genre. Exposition is carefully laid out exactly when needed, as opposed to in a giant flurry like The Eye. One might be tempted to say it’s been dumbed down or “Americanized”, but I didn’t see it that way. It’s simply a good story told well.
It’s also directed well. One thing I particularly liked was during the finale, when the hero and villain are squaring off. Rather than a bunch of extreme close-up shots rapidly edited together, director Terra Shin pulls back and makes maybe 2 edits over a 30 second fight. It’s an excellent sequence. I am not familiar with Shin (this is his first film), but it’s clear he is a skilled filmmaker, and I look forward to seeing another of his films, even if it’s not horror.
The DVD comes with some nice extras as well. There are about 20 minutes of deleted scenes, and to be honest many of them could have been left in the film without any problem (it’s not a particularly long film, though I suspect they were mainly cut for pacing nonetheless). Definitely worth watching. There is also a standard making of piece (about 25 minutes) that is also worth a look, and finally, 10 minutes about the set design. This is a side of filmmaking we don’t often get a good look at, so its inclusion was much appreciated. In this day of bloated DVDs with pointless extras, I can happily say that The Black House’s extras are definitely worth your time (provided you liked the film anyway).
Note to US Producers â please spare us a remake. The original is completely accessible to American audiences (language barrier aside) and great as is. Leave it alone.
