Blood Rain
DIR Kim Dae-Seung | South Korea | 2005 | 117mins.
In Korean with English subtitles.
SHOWTIMES:
Weds. Oct. 5 | 4:00pm | Vogue Theatre
Fri. Oct. 7 | 4:00pm | Granville 7 Theatre, Cinema 7
Reviewed by Yu Gu
After watching this movie, I went to a restaurant with some friends and ordered a kimchi hotpot for dinner. I came home around midnight and I could not sleep. Admittedly, I also drank an almond coffee that night, but it wasn’t caffeine that was keeping me awake. The characters and events of Blood Rain tore at my mind until daybreak.
Weon-Gyu is a young compassionate yet rational investigator sent from the mainland to investigate a series of mysterious and gruesome murders committed on a small paper-making island. This ain’t no American B-movie gore, this is realistic and heart-wrenching rendering of decapitation, impalement and cracking of the human skull set in early 19th century Korea. Each frame isn’t so much sensational and desensitising, but horrifying and memorable. As the investigation continues, things become progressively more strange and perverse. Ranging from scenes straight out of a Victorian gothic novel, to scenes dealing with traditional Korean aristocratic ethos, Kim weaves the often disparate themes and aesthetics into an intricate and fine tapestry.
The island atmosphere becomes more and more claustrophobic and everyone becomes more and more desperate. Blood Rain left me at a loss as to what really happened in its cinematic world, I began to question both logic and superstition. And the title isn’t a lie either.