a review of 哭声

here i am again, hung up on the writing in an otherwise pretty cool movie. yeah, you can make a great movie with weird / bad writing...but it's a loooooot harder. i also think a lot of people assume that if something is confusing af or they don't understand it, then the art is really sophisticated or genius or something. this writing however, seems purposefully confusing to create some kinda "suspense" (but definitely not suspense). once the drama starts to unfold, you just have two different characters telling this man different things. and...unless there's a secret third option, you basically know the story will end in one of two ways, and it's not so much suspense as it is "i'm excited for this to end so i can know which character is lying". the cinematography is often stunning. kim hwan-hee gives an unreal performance as hyo-jin, who was already going to be the most interesting character no matter who played her...and is just taken next level. those two things alone should be enough to bolster a movie to greatness (and those two things are the reason for all the stars)...(oh, also some great gore, and this is coming from someone who usually doesn't like gore). but here, the writing was too much to overcome for me. the movie meanders often and plods at times leaving me simultaneously confused and also bored a few too many segments of this quite long movie. also, i cannot for the life of me understand what the film is trying to say...and whenever i come up with a theory and back test it through all the evidence we have from watching the movie, not a single one has held up to scrutiny. and that's because this movie is full of contradictions. also...just uneven tone. first we have goofy, then we have serious, then we get like slasher and also slapstick comedy (which yeah, that's a thing some people like), and then like a drama section. i dunno, it just didn't really work for me in that regard. ultimately, this movie is more confusing than scary. but it's nice to look at and it has a couple cool characters.