Colonial Korea, 1938. A beautiful but tubercular young girl, Ju-ran, called by her Japanized name Shizuko (Park Bo-young,
A Werewolf Boy), is sent to a boarding school, Kyeongseong Academy, located deep in the mountains.
The principal of the academy (Uhm Ji-won, Like You Know It All), glamorous and suave, is allegedly running a military-sponsored educational program that will result in two students being sent to Tokyo on a full scholarship. Ju-ran is harassed by the bitchy Yuka (Kong Ye-ji, Shuttlecock) but becomes a fast friend with In-deok, a.k.a. Kazue (Park So-dam, The Priests), a star athlete of the school.
Ju-ran soon learns that there was another girl named Shizuko who mysteriously disappeared after showing some strange symptoms, such as imperviousness to physical pain. When more classmates disappear under mysterious circumstances, Ju-ran and In-deok together investigate the dark secret behind the president’s “program,” and the terrifying fate awaiting its candidates.
Lee Hae-young, who began his career as one-half of an ace screenwriter team with his partner Lee Hae-joon (their co-screenplay credits include Conduct Zero, Arahan, Kick the Moon and Like a Virgin), has gone solo since 2010, writing the screenplay for the controversial 26 Years and directing Festival. Lee can be relied on for his rich understanding of a wide range of genres, and his open-minded perspective that restores humanity to the spurned minorities of Korean society.
His new project as a writer-director is certainly unique. It starts off pushing all the expected buttons for a young-girl-in-school-uniform K-horror, but then it veers sharply off towards a completely different sub-genre. To concretely name which genre it is would in fact constitute a major spoiler, ironically one that you might easily expect from Japan (Kaneko Shusuke, one of the doyens of Japanese tokusatsu cinema, in fact recently made one film in this mode).
Lee is a talented filmmaker and lets the creative juices flow among the production staff and the young cast (who, despite their convincing performances as teenagers, are mostly in their late twenties). DP Kim Il-yeon (Hide and Seek) and Lighting Director Kim Min-jae (The Front Line) provide striking visuals, including breathtaking aerial shots of the Academy and the surrounding forests, reminiscent of The Shining’s (1980) opening sequence.
Han A-reum (Another Family) and her production design team, including the company Manjijak, which was responsible for a wonderful collection of colonial-period props, work overtime to create an exquisitely ordered yet slightly sinister-looking environment.
Park Bo-young is appropriately subdued and fragile, but is somewhat disappointing after her “transformation” in the latter half: I thought she should have been a lot spunkier or conversely a lot scarier, the way I would imagine Im Soo-jung or Kim Ok-vin to be in her shoes. Among the cast members, the strongest impression is left by rising star Park So-dam, whose earnest, slightly quizzical expression is sometimes heart-breakingly attractive.
Unfortunately Lee attempts to wrap up the story in a neat package in the last thirty minutes, and the effort backfires, with stereotypes (including asinine Japanese soldiers played by Korean actors with terrible accents and intonation) ultimately overtaking the characters.
As a genre film that attempts to dissect the colonial experience of the Koreans, The Silenced falls a bit short. However its remarkable beauty and daring mix-and-match of genres do make it worth seeing.