The rating system for Korean films has always been perfect, and they will be divided into five levels according to the content and picture of the film, the highest level, usually only open to a small number of people. Audiences familiar with Korean movies should know that their horror films have always been unique, such as the popular "Pen Immortal" series, and the zombie-themed "Busan Trip" series, etc., from portraying the psychological fears of the characters to presenting exciting scenes, so that the audience has a new understanding of Korean horror films.
There is no shortage of impressive thrillers in the history of Korean cinema, and "Seeing the Devil", released in 2010, should be called a masterpiece in recent years. This crime horror movie jointly delivered to the audience by The two major film emperors Choi Min Sik and Lee Byung-hyun has caused a huge sensation once it came out, and people marveled at the bloody killing scene depicted in the movie, as well as the distortion and perversion of human nature in the storyline, and many viewers said after watching the whole film that they would never dare to watch it a second time!
At that time, the film was too violent and bloody to pass the review after it was completed, so the director had to cut seven minutes in the later stage, and finally was able to barely release it. Even when released in more open Western countries, the film is still two minutes less than the original film, which shows that the thriller of this film is beyond the average person's ability to bear.
The film "Seeing the Devil" is different from "Pen Immortal", deliberately creating a suffocating horror atmosphere, nor is it equivalent to the seemingly bloody picture like the American drama "The Walking Dead", it is directly presented to the audience with that extremely violent criminal means, and describes the whole process of this crime in detail, and the timid audience absolutely dare not look directly at some of the shots!
The story unfolds on a snowy night when a beautiful woman's car has to stop on the side of the highway due to a burst tire, and he quickly calls his boyfriend, Kim So-hyun (played by Lee Byung-hyun), a young police officer who works for the National Intelligence Agency, who tells him not to be afraid and waits for the trailer to rescue him. At this moment, a strange man knocked on her car window and asked: Do you need help?
The woman was obviously wary of the stranger's "kindness", and the boyfriend also reminded her on the other end of the phone not to open the car door easily. After hanging up the phone, the woman found that the strange man's car was always parked in front of her and did not go away, just when she was wondering, the strange man suddenly held a force hammer, violently smashed the woman's car window, and forcibly broke into the car.
The cold night sky was filled with a woman's scream of horror and misery! This perverted uncle is the protagonist of this film, the murderous demon Jang Kyung-chul, played by Choi Min-sik.
Zhang Jingzhe took the woman back to his residence and prepared to dismember her, and the dying woman begged not to kill her, because she was pregnant, but Zhang Jingzhe had a cold face, not moved at all, or cut down with a knife! The whole process of killing and splitting the body is both brutal and bloody, and it is said that even Choi Min-sik himself was depressed for several days after watching this clip, and this paragraph is the 7 minutes that were later cut off in the legend.
The next day, three children played under the bridge, and one of them found a black plastic pocket, opened it, and found that it contained a human ear. The police then conducted a large-scale search in the area and found the fragments of the dismembered body of Kim So-hyun's girlfriend, and Kim So-hyun, who lost his lover, was in pain and determined to personally find the murderer to avenge his girlfriend!
He first applied for a vacation, and then with the assistance of his father-in-law, he locked up four fugitive suspects, and after layers of investigation, he finally found the real murderer Zhang Jingzhe, and a cat-and-mouse war between good and evil was about to be staged.
At this time, the killer Zhang Jingzhe did not give up, but murdered a single woman on a snowy night. After killing people, he behaved unusually calmly, comfortably doing skin care, sitting on the bed and leisurely playing guitar, as if the previous tragedies had nothing to do with him, and his demonic essence was exposed here!
On the other hand, police officer Kim So-hyun found Jang Kyung-chul's parents' home and learned from his parents that Jang Kyung-cheol was an unfilial son, and his old father even said that he was mud and could not support the wall. Finally, Kim so-hyun found out from Jang Kyung-chul's son where he might now be hiding, so he went to find out.
After arriving at the destination, Kim so-hyun found the engagement ring he had given to his girlfriend in the sewers, and concluded that the murderer was Jang Kyung-chul.
Jang Kyung-cheol continues his killing, at which point he captures another schoolgirl, takes him back to his station, and prepares to carry out the assault. At the critical moment, Kim So-hyun appeared, and the two faced each other for the first time, and Jang Kyung-chol, when he saw that only Kim So-hyun was alone, relaxed his heart and rushed towards Kim So-hyun with a sharp scythe!
After a fierce fight, the killer Zhang Jingzhe was defeated, just when Jin Xiuxian raised a stone to smash zhang Jingzhe, he suddenly changed his mind, he could not let the demon Zhang Jingzhe die so painfully, he wanted to slowly torture him, let him also experience what pain is. So he put a wiretap tracking capsule into the mouth of the unconscious Zhang Jingzhe and let him go.
After waking up, Zhang Jingzhe was anxious to escape, and killed three people in a row in the process of escaping. In order to heal the arm that was broken by the other party during the fight with Kim So-hyun, Jang Kyung-chul comes to a private clinic, where the murderous maniac is bloodthirsty, first killing the doctor who has just treated himself, and then having evil thoughts about Miss Nurse, coercing her to satisfy her desires.
But after the praying mantis cicada catcher Huang Que, Kim So-hyun, who had followed all the way, reappeared, this time not only beating Zhang Jingzhe once again, but also personally breaking his ankle tendons, and the murderous demon head cried out in pain!
The badly injured killer is once again let go, and this time he chooses to return to his friend Bearded, who is also a pervert who likes to kill. Here, Kim so-hyun, who was tracking him, stopped another killing and engaged in a fierce fight with Jang Kyung-chul and his two accomplices. After a bitter fight, the three were defeated by Kim So-hyun, and they were all seriously injured and taken to the hospital.
At this moment, the police chief investigating the case has understood the whole process, he ran to tell Kim So-hyun's father-in-law, begging him to let Kim so-hyun restrain the horse from the cliff, worried about the confrontation between human nature and animal nature, and finally turned into a beast.
But the seeds of hatred were already deeply buried in Kim So-hyun's heart, and he once again released Jang Kyung-chul and swallowed a tracking capsule for him. But this time, Zhang Jingzhe, who pretended to be unconscious, knew the reason why he was always found, he ran to a pharmacy, grabbed a few bottles of laxatives, and casually created two murders. Before that, he told Kim so-hyun that he was going to his father-in-law's house to seek revenge, and then he would surrender himself so that Kim so-hyun could also taste the pain.
Kim So-hyun, who hurried to his father-in-law's house, was still a step late, and his father-in-law and sister-in-law were both poisoned, and the scene was unbearable. The demon who killed the man is driving to the police station to prepare to surrender, because in South Korean law, murderers are not executed.
The police waited in a tight line, waiting for the arrival of the murderous maniac, and at the moment when Jang Kyung-cheol was about to be arrested, Kim So-hyun, who was blinded by reason, kidnapped Jang Kyung-cheol again in full view of everyone.
He repeatedly tortured the murderous maniac and asked him if he would feel fear when he was about to die, but Jang Kyung-cheol was still stiff-mouthed and shouted that he would kill himself if he had the ability.
But In the end, Kim So-hyun did not take matters into his own hands, but set up a killing mechanism, as long as someone opened the door, the knife hanging above the demon's head would fall, and in order to save his life, the demon Jang Kyung-cheol must bite the rope in his mouth, otherwise the head would fall to the ground.
Jang Kyung-cheol's parents, who received Kim So-hyun's call, rushed to hear movement in the house, so they tried to open the door, and Inside Jang Kyung-cheol heard his parents' voices, but he couldn't shout, he could only bite the rope, but the people outside didn't know anything about it at all, and they were still desperately pulling the door!
Finally, the moment the door opened, the cutter fell! This murderous demon who has committed many murders finally got his due fate, and Kim So-hyun, who is walking on the road, is relieved to hear Jang Kyung-chul's wailing from the headset, and hides his face and weeps, and the film ends here.
"Seeing the Devil" is full of violence and bloodshed, even the male protagonist Kim So-hyun, who is a police officer, also uses cruel violence in the process of dealing with Jang Kyung-chul, if Jang Kyung-cheol is born with a murderous perverted nature in his bones, then Kim So-hyun is a demon who fights violence with violence in the depths of his heart when hatred is budding.
Two kinds of demons, one visible and one invisible. And measured in terms of practical significance, there is no doubt that the demons in the heart are even more terrifying, and this is the deepest meaning of the film.
Just imagine, if after his girlfriend was killed, Kim So-hyun could arrest Jang Kyung-cheol in time, instead of playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with him, then the next few murders would not have occurred one after another, nor would so many innocent lives be implicated, and his family would not be hurt twice. It was because he could not control the demons in his heart that he went to the extreme, resulting in one tragedy after another. In this sense, he and Zhang Jingzhe are both demons!
"Seeing the Devil" has won many awards since its release, such as south Korea's Green Dragon Award, Dazhong Award, etc., and won the Asian Film Awards in 2011, and the wonderful interpretations of two film emperor actors Lee Byung-hyun and Choi Min-sik added a lot to the film, but there are also many unreasonable logical errors in the film.
For example, when Jang Kyung-cheol hit Kim So-hyun's girlfriend in the head with a sharp hammer, according to common sense, normal people cannot withstand such a heavy blow, but in the plot of subsequent dismemberment, the performance is that the woman is still alive, which is obviously unreasonable.
In addition, when Jin Xiuxian fought with Zhang Jingzhe at the bearded family, he tapped his head several times with an iron pipe, seeing that Zhang Jingzhe's head was bleeding like a injection, under normal circumstances, most of them would lead to people's deaths, unless the other party was a copper-headed iron arm, but after Zhang Jingzhe was simply treated in the hospital, he did not even have a head bandage, and even did not have coma symptoms, he could still have the ability to kill people, which was a bit thunderous.
And finally when Kim So-hyun learns that Jang Kyung-cheol is going to his father-in-law's house to seek revenge, he can completely notify his family to hide at the first time, or call the police, so that the police are responsible for protecting the safety of their families, rather than continuing to look for Jang Kyung-cheol, which is common sense, and anyone who encounters this situation will make the same choice. However, in order to deliberately create the tragedy of the film, the director ignores the objective laws and blindly pursues the plot purpose that matches the end, which inevitably makes the film regret!
In the 11 years since its release, the Douban score of "Seeing the Devil" is at a high of 7.8 points, 46.4
% of the audience gave a four-star rating, and the reason why no more people are giving five stars may be the reason. But I have to say that this is a rare good movie, but the theme and content are too violent, and it is not suitable for too many people to watch. But the purpose of the film is good, it warns the world not to fight violence with violence, everything must be carried out within the framework of the law, and those who do evil things are hateful, but the original good people have demons because of hatred, which is even more frightening!