09-10-2015, 02:22 PM
Dae-seung Kim, director of that eternal classic, Bungee Jumping of Their Own, has done it again with Blood Rain, though I’m not entirely certain what “it” is. On a remote Korean island, intrigue surrounds a famous paper mill. Each year the islanders must pay tribute to the Chinese government with a ship-load of high-quality paper. But this year, once loaded in the harbor, the boat catches fire under suspicious circumstances. Villagers start dying in gruesome ways reminiscent of a series of executions performed seven years ago. A team of investigators is called in to solve the case.
I must give special kudos to the makeup department for giving every man in this movie the same small goatee. This assembly-line approach doubtless saved the studio a ton of money, if burdening the viewer with the challenge of telling the men apart. Compounding the problem are flashbacks indistinguishable from the present and populated by still more goateed lookalikes. Would it have killed makeup to render some men shaved or fully bearded, or mustachioed, or bald, or with long hair? And with character names like Kang So-yeon, Kim Chi-sung, and Lee Won-kyu, the subtitles were of little help.
On the positive side, the movie had a substantial budget and looks great. There’s large sets (including the paper mill), a large cast, great atmosphere, and the costuming is topnotch.
There’s plenty of blood too, sometimes even falling from the sky. Deserving special attention is a credible depiction of someone being pulled apart by four horses (often erroneously called “drawing and quartering”). So many movies get it wrong, idiotically showing four horses each dragging off a limb, leaving the torso in the village square. But as I learned from childhood experiments with spiders (tying a string to each of the eight legs, then pulling on all strings at once), one limb always wins the body. It’s the old wishbone effect. [Ed. note: Northern Indiana, where these experiments were carried out, no longer has any spiders.]
I’ve saved the women characters for last, and here I’ll pause while you do a googol image search on “South Korean cosmetic surgery.” Just do it, okay? Nothing dirty, I promise. Done? Fine. Let’s continue.
You didn’t do the search, did you. I know you didn’t. How can we stay on the same page if you don’t follow along? Now do the damned search! Good. Moving along...
You didn’t do it even now, did you. Dammit all to hell! Okay, okay. I’ll do it for you. All you need to do is click This Bloody Link!
You didn’t click on it, did you. Click on it!
Assuming that you did, you see the problem. It’s worse than the men with goatees. In contemporary South Korea, there’s really only one Korean woman anymore. So if a Korean movie has two or more women in it, good luck keeping them straight!
At least with the men in this movie, there’s some variation in clothing. I refer in particular to the hats that the investigators wear. In essence, they wear Cathy Gale hats, slightly lincolnized.
All in all, a very complicated horror mystery further compounded by an indistinguishable cast. Only recommended if you’re looking for Waldo.
I must give special kudos to the makeup department for giving every man in this movie the same small goatee. This assembly-line approach doubtless saved the studio a ton of money, if burdening the viewer with the challenge of telling the men apart. Compounding the problem are flashbacks indistinguishable from the present and populated by still more goateed lookalikes. Would it have killed makeup to render some men shaved or fully bearded, or mustachioed, or bald, or with long hair? And with character names like Kang So-yeon, Kim Chi-sung, and Lee Won-kyu, the subtitles were of little help.
On the positive side, the movie had a substantial budget and looks great. There’s large sets (including the paper mill), a large cast, great atmosphere, and the costuming is topnotch.
There’s plenty of blood too, sometimes even falling from the sky. Deserving special attention is a credible depiction of someone being pulled apart by four horses (often erroneously called “drawing and quartering”). So many movies get it wrong, idiotically showing four horses each dragging off a limb, leaving the torso in the village square. But as I learned from childhood experiments with spiders (tying a string to each of the eight legs, then pulling on all strings at once), one limb always wins the body. It’s the old wishbone effect. [Ed. note: Northern Indiana, where these experiments were carried out, no longer has any spiders.]
I’ve saved the women characters for last, and here I’ll pause while you do a googol image search on “South Korean cosmetic surgery.” Just do it, okay? Nothing dirty, I promise. Done? Fine. Let’s continue.
You didn’t do the search, did you. I know you didn’t. How can we stay on the same page if you don’t follow along? Now do the damned search! Good. Moving along...
You didn’t do it even now, did you. Dammit all to hell! Okay, okay. I’ll do it for you. All you need to do is click This Bloody Link!
You didn’t click on it, did you. Click on it!
Assuming that you did, you see the problem. It’s worse than the men with goatees. In contemporary South Korea, there’s really only one Korean woman anymore. So if a Korean movie has two or more women in it, good luck keeping them straight!
At least with the men in this movie, there’s some variation in clothing. I refer in particular to the hats that the investigators wear. In essence, they wear Cathy Gale hats, slightly lincolnized.
All in all, a very complicated horror mystery further compounded by an indistinguishable cast. Only recommended if you’re looking for Waldo.
I'm nobody's pony.