Time Contributor | County Howe
Older youth in a cinema
Recently, Korean dramas
"Dark Glory"
The second season caused heated discussions on the Internet, and in comparison, Korean movies were much inferior.
Since the beginning of the year, several interesting Korean films have been muted after their release.
Such as a sci-fi film produced by Netflix
"Zhenyi"
, the Korean remake of "Ghost" of "The Wind", the peak of domestic spy warfare, "Negotiations" adapted from the real events of hostage rescue, etc.
"Jung-yi" is directed by Yeon Sang-ho ("Trip to Busan"), "Ghost" starring Xue Jingqiu and Park So-dan ("Parasite"), and "Negotiations" is led by Hwang Jung-min and Hyun Bin.
Just looking at the lineup, each one is worth paying attention to, but the quality of these films is really lackluster.
This makes people think about a question -
What happened to Korean genre films?
《Negotiations》
The bottleneck of the moment
From 2022 to 2023, the best Korean movie is "Determination to Break Up".
The cinematography, dazzling editing, and deep emotions maintain a quasi-master artistic texture, but strictly speaking, "Determination to Break Up" is closer to an art film than a genre film.
In addition to this movie, Korean genre films from last year to date can be divided into three levels.
The first level, entertaining and ideological, maintained a certain quality.
For example, director Lee Jung-jae's first work "Hunting", Lee Sung Min's new work "I Remember" and so on.
"Hunting" is Lee Jung-jae's ambition to rely on his connections in the circle to madly show the ambitions of the Korean film industry, with a tense plot and sharp visual effects, and the life and death decision of the two male protagonists at the end, and a little bit of "Secret Agent" (directed by Yoon Jong-bin) Korean speculation.
"I Remember" puts the serial revenge murders that occur in contemporary cities into the history of war with human nature changes to examine, so that the cool text setting with a strong sense of contrast of "old man killer" has a compassionate anti-war connotation.
The second level is not ideological, only entertaining.
Such as "Crime City 2" starring Ma Dong-seok, "Together 2: International" starring Hyun Bin, "Night Lord" starring Yoo Junyeol and so on.
"Crime City 2" renders a bloody and violent aesthetic between the two "murder weapons in the world" of Ma Dong-seok and Sun Seok-jiu.
"Mutual Assistance 2" creates an action comedy with a male gaze between Hyun Bin, Daniel Henie, and Lim Yoona.
"The Night Lord" outlines the dirtiness of feudal power through the reversal of the night in the Korean court.
Crime City 2
The third level, the rotten works that even lack entertainment.
As mentioned above, "Zhenyi", "Ghost", "Negotiations".
These three films still show the maturity of the Korean film industry, and actors such as Hwang Jung-min, Xue Kyung-woo, Park Hae-so and other actors have also given good acting skills, but the screenwriter of the film has no highlights, and there is almost no conflict and climax.
"Ghost"
Combining these three levels, it can be found that the current Korean genre films lack the sharp aura that breaks the ceiling, but fall into the bottleneck of assembly line operations.
Compared with Korean drama screenwriters who are still actively exploring new narratives and new resonances (such as "My Liberation Log", "The King of Pigs", etc.), Korean film screenwriters lie in the comfort zone of the film industry and rely too much on the power of subject matter and actors.
For example, "Representations" is based on the Taliban's 2007 South Korean hostage incident, but the film does not really bring out the thrill of the prototype incident, not only did not become another "Mogadishu", but also made the agent played by Hyun Bin become a tool man.
"Mogadishu"
"Ghost" also abandons the claustrophobic space narrative and mottled identity suspense of "The Wind", and instead puts the two actresses (Li Haoni and Park Sudan) in a superficial gunfight scene, and the home-country feelings of the original work are even more gone.
Today's Korean genre films have long lost their quality.
Once brilliant
Korean genre films, which have experienced quite glorious times.
"Memories of Killing", "Horror Live Broadcast", "Chaser", "Yellow Sea", "New World", etc., are all classic Korean films that are very familiar to domestic fans.
Even in the past few years, Korean genre films have gradually declined, but there is at least one best work every year.
Such as "Agent" in 2018, "Parasite" in 2019, and "Ministers of Nanshan" in 2020.
"The Ministers of Nanshan"
In the powerful genre shell of murder, terrorist attack, espionage, gangster, and smuggling, these classics hide the director's deep thinking on serious topics such as social ecology, class, peninsular conflict, and black and white infiltration, and the audiovisual and connotation are extremely impactful.
For example, "Memories of Murder" takes the Hwaseong serial murders as the prototype story, and it pursues not the curiosity of the murder itself, but in the chilling image details, to spread the social oppression felt by ordinary people in South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s.
At the end, Song Kang-ho's gaze not only echoes his gaze on class at the end of "Parasite" 16 years later, but also blurs the line between story and reality in the film.
Blurring the boundaries is another trick for Korean genre films to enhance the tension of drama.
At the end of Hwang's spy film "Secret Agent," the director invited Lee Hyo-ri to appear in a recreation of her classic meeting with North Korea's top dancer Cho Myung-ae in a collaborative advertisement in 2005.
Li Hyo-ri plays Li Hyo-ri, making "Agent" have a significance beyond drama on the scale of breaking the ice in North Korea.
In 2021, the Korean film "Hostage" remade from the domestic "Rescue Mr. Wu" also used this trick, and Huang Zhengmin played Huang Zhengmin.
But because of the roughness of the script, the film does not have the charm that penetrates into reality as "Memories of Murder" and "Agent".
The most important reason why Korean genre films have been brilliant is actually one word - no taboos.
The most representative is "Yellow Sea".
In the film, the axe slaughter scene of Min Jung-hak played by Kim Yoon-seok is an iconic passage in which Korean films are completely unafraid of blood.
And at the end of the film, Ha Jung-woo's Jiunan is thrown into the Yellow Sea of Night, which is a typical scene of Korean films accustomed to extinguishing dreamy hopes and making people fall into cold reality.
The former does not care whether the audience's eyes are dead or alive, and the latter does not care about the audience's heart, and everything is handed over to the reality of evil.
Unfortunately, although the South Korean government has emphasized in recent years not to interfere in film creation and create a completely free space for filmmakers, Korean filmmakers are still no longer the ultimate creation they once were, but have fallen into a mediocre intermediate state.
For example, "Iron Rain" directed by Yang Yushuo presents the North Korean nuclear crisis with extreme images, and contains serious thinking about the state of the multinational game.
And in "Iron Rain 2", the audiovisual and connotation were completely downgraded, and the sequel of the same director was reduced to a child's play.
The distance between Korean genre films and now is like the distance between "Iron Rain" and "Iron Rain 2".
"Iron Rain"
What to look forward to in the future
There are two very interesting laws in the flow of Korean genre films, both of which are related to Hong Kong films.
First, Korean films seem to have been "following" the pace of Hong Kong films.
In the early to mid-period, Korean genre films learned a lot of performances, techniques and story methods of Hong Kong films.
This can be seen from Hong Kong stars such as Leslie Cheung and Wang Zuxian and the popularity of Hong Kong films such as "The True Color of Heroes" in South Korea.
Corresponding to specific films, the ambiguous relationship between "New World" and "Infernal Affairs" is the best example.
"New World"
Whether "New World" "remakes" or "pays" to "Infernal Affairs" is actually no substantial evidence, but it is clear that "Infernal Affairs" inspired the creation of "New World", and "New World" also got rid of the influence of "Infernal Affairs" to some extent with excellent quality.
Up to now, Korean films are the same as today's Hong Kong films, with serious faults in actors and scripts that are modeled.
Seeing new works by gold medal actors such as Song Kanghao, Huang Jungmin, and Ha Jung-woo, the audience is often shocked, but once the film comes out, it is inevitable to scold and curse.
Korean films and Hong Kong films have reached the stage where only actors remain, and actors brush their faces too often to eat the old book.
《Negotiations》
Second, previous Korean genre films were deeply influenced by Hong Kong films, but after "Parasite", this influence came more from Hollywood.
The failure of sequel blockbusters such as "Iron Rain 2" and "Busan Travel 2" is because Korean directors are eager to imitate Hollywood genre narratives, thus losing the unique regional and social meaning of Korean films.
Although the creation of Korean filmmakers seems to have entered an increasingly narrow alley, the past charm of Korean genre films still has a strong afterglow.
"Horror Live"
Therefore, some Korean movies to be released in the future are still exciting.
These films, in part, are sequels.
Such as Ma Dong-seok's "Crime City 3", Hwang Jung-min's "Veteran 2", Ha Jung-woo's "Berlin 2: The Observer" and so on.
Crime City 3
The other part is an independent new film.
Such as Hyun Bin "Harbin", Cha Shengyuan "Tyrant", Li Dixun "Escape" and so on.
Whether it is a sequel or an independent new film, they all have one thing in common, that is, the director, actors, and IP have relied on their previous success to accumulate a fairly thick audience connection.
For example, "Harbin" not only based on the story of Ahn Chung-geun's assassination of Ito Hirofumi in Harbin, China in 1909, aroused the strong curiosity of East Asian audiences, director Woo Min Ho, who also established the status of Korean genre film standard-bearer through the two works of "The Insider" and "The Ministers of Namsan ".
"The Insider"
In addition to Woo Min Ho, there are also directors such as Yoo Seung-wan ("Mogadishu"), Park Hoon-jung ("The Witch"), Law Hong-yun ("Yellow Sea"), Jang Jae-hyun ("Woo Po Ha"), etc., all of which will release new works to save the decline of Korean genre films.
Whether it succeeds, time will wait and see.