Letter #23: The Witch (Pt. 1) / The Call / #Alive

Good morning, Erin. (That’s right—we’re going back to the classics!)

It’s been a month since we last chatted[1], as I write this, meaning I’ve moved past the “general moping” and “binging Selina Gomez music” stages of grief and into the “compelled to write poetry” stage. Which is the most embarrassing stage. But it also rather nicely sets up what today’s letter is all about.

…no, I don’t mean it’s about my poetry. I’m not a monster.

And when I say “write poetry,” I’m basically talking about what should probably be considered micro-poems, because—for reasons we will not get into—I generally can’t tolerate writing a poem that’s more than, say, a single standard sentence in length. (Which, yes, we all see the irony of.)

So, having already finished two of your series recommendations since we spoke in April, and being in the middle of four separate ones I will not be able to complete for at least a couple of weeks (one of them’s a weekly, so it’s not all because I’m a meandering fool!), I thought: why not just watch some movies and do some micro-letters?

And so…I have!

So, brace yourself, my K-drama sage—we’re about to get filmy!

Wait, no, that can’t be what I…filmsical? Movie-ing? Cinemagraphi—cinematic! That’s the word I was look fo—cinematic. We’re about to get cinematic!

[waits for your audible cheering to die down]

(And don’t worry—I’m not going to spoil anything. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of these, and you know I don’t like to get too detailed with stuff I’m not sure you’re familiar with.)

Okay, here we go:

 

Part I: The Witch: Part 1: The Subversion

By virtue of you having off-handedly pointed out that the main Our Beloved Summer cast had previously been paired up (in a manner of speaking) in some horror-y looking film, I decided—what the heck—let’s give it a shot.

And a shot it was given.

The upside is that this made me appreciate the main couple in Our Beloved Summer a lot more. Because, as much as I was lukewarm on their chemistry (as it was written, at least) on that show, at least there was some attempt to establish a pre-existing connection upon which to hang their conflict. Here? Goodness, talk about flimsy. (In terms of content, though, not context. There is some manner of context for them, but not much.)

It’s not a great movie.

Mostly, the issue is that there seems not to be enough space for the story (such as it is) to play out, with there being a pretty sizeable cast with fairly complex backstories/relationships that—at least how they are written—beg for more exploration rather than satisfy what we need for the plot to unfold. It take a long time to get to the heart of the whole thing, and, by then, they have to literally have a character monologue the solution to the mystery so that they can move on to the final act of the movie. It feels like an ambitious student film, in that regard, where the writer/director has this massive, intricate mythos behind the whole thing—but it’s mythos that he can’t quite funnel into a single, one-off story. I think it needed at least another hour to give everything its tonal due.

But it did have the Yakuza Boss guy from My Name in it, which is always a positive in my book. (He was my favorite, here, as well.)

Which was not the only positive, though. The cast was overall pretty good, which Main-Ung (from Our Beloved Summer) probably giving the best performance, in my opinion, despite having some of the hammiest writing to overcome. And, especially early on, the ambience is appropriately bleak. Plus everyone gets to flex their English-speaking skills, which is fun.

Bottom line, though, is that this one isn’t really worth the time. Or, given some of the English-speaking, the effort it takes to suss out exactly what was being said.

Worst of the three in this letter.

And not just because NJ wasn’t in it.

 

Part II: The Call

Now this is an interesting one, as the Netflix description makes it seem a little different from what it actually is (but also is totally accurate), so I had that misconception in my head as I jumped into it—which is my fault and not at all the movie’s. But, even taking that into account, the fact of the matter is that I’m a simple man: I see something that’s vaguely time travel, I click it.

Which is as much of a spoiler as I will allow, here, because it’s impossible to say anything about this movie without that one hook of the premise being made clear: a woman in 2019 plugs in a chunky old wireless (landline) telephone and it magically connects to the exact same phone in 1999, making her and the owner of the phone back then the only calls the phone will make. Kind of a walkie-talkie through time, in practice. 

With this one, we’re going to start with the positives: it’s creepy as heck, at times. The atmosphere is pretty much perfect throughout the whole thing. The acting is good (or it isn’t bad, which might not be the same thing, but I was satisfied by it)—plus I recognized three of the actors, which you know always perks me up: Useless Dad from True Beauty, Autistic Brother from It’s Okay…, and Lady in Red from Goblin. There are some really tense/intense sections, and, overall, the movie keeps your attention for the whole of the runtime. And some of the “it’s 1999” stuff they throw around is somewhat nostalgic. I mean, you weren’t alive, yet, but trust me, much like with Twenty-Five, Twenty-One, it was fun to see. (No Y2K stuff, though, which is a bit of a letdown.)

The negatives, though, is that not a lick of it makes any sense.

I mean, time travel almost always doesn’t really make sense, but most movies are able to keep the internal logic of it straight within the story. And here? Not so much. Which—frequently—pulled me out of the story. (Of course, so did a lot of decisions the characters make, but I’m also going to blame some of those on the time travel stuff not being thought out enough for the characters to make internally consistent choices.) You can wave away some of it if you like the payoffs enough, but even the best parts of this movie don’t quite add up.

Also, the ending is total nonsense. But also because the time travel rules aren’t followed by anyone (on the production side).

Still, I think it’s worth a watch, all in all. And, it’s close, but I’d say it’s the best of the three in this letter.

 

Part III: The #ALIVE

…okay, it’s just called #Alive, but the other two had the in them, so…I like a completed pattern.

ANYWAY.

So, this is a zombie movie, and, given my track record with Train to Busan and All of Us are Dead, I figured this one wouldn’t be the worst pick for this little diversion. And, though nowhere near as good as the two examples listed above (though it did have the dad from All of Us are Dead (and, as it turns out, the protagonist from The Call, so I got to see her back to back)), it was pretty all right.

There isn’t much to it, honestly, even considering it’s a zombie movie. It starts out as a story that uses the zombie thing more as a setting than a plot, then it morphs into a typical zombie survival thing…kind of. It’s a little uneven, when it comes to transitioning from one part of the story to the other. It might actually be a pretty realistic version of what might happen in this scenario, but it’s a pretty unremarkable rendition of that, if that’s the case. And, as such, the characters are…functional. Which, I guess, is all you need.

There are a few hefty contrivances for what are obviously moments the director thinks will look cool. And they kind of are, even if they stretch credulity.

But, hey, it’s still a zombie survival story. And even getting it sort of right is usually entertaining enough. So, if you’ve got 90 minutes, it’s not the worst thing to fill time with.

And, of course, it’s the middle choice of the three in this letter.

 

  

…which is all I have to say about that.

I’ll be back to regular stuff soon. Hope you didn’t mind this brief detour.

 

--Daryl

 

 

 

 

PS – To follow up on my Suzy comments from last time: as I’m sure you know, Psy just put out a new video which features Suzy, and the comment section was HILARIOUS—firstly because it’s tons of fawning over her and comparatively little commentary about the song itself, and secondly because someone asked who this Suzy lady is that everyone is going crazy for her…to which Suzy fans talked about how she was the best/prettiest/most popular Korean singer/actress…and to which (and this was the part I most chuckled over) the IU fans said, “Umm…hang on there, pal, I think you’re forgetting #BestGirl beats Suzy in all categories any day of the week.” And then there was a lot of arguing about which commenter was the “most Korean” and, therefore, to be trusted more than the others.

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[1] …are you okay? I’m hoping you’re okay. Or a secret agent. Oo oo oo—or an intergalactic hustler! Just you, jumpin’ through space portals, takin’ fools at the pool table. Gosh, if you just had mono or something I’m gonna be so disappointed, now.