However, there is a high level of satisfaction in watching Ja-yoon face down a plethora of villains, including Choi Woo-shik as Nobleman, who comes across as a smug mix of K-Pop idol and sadistic ’80s action villain. The violence when it comes is inventively bloody although the necessary aid of CGI in the film’s closing act adds a filter of unreality that robs it of the in your face and sometimes dangerous feeling nature that the best Eastern action cinema regularly offers up, examples being recent Frightfest favourite The Villainess and The Night Comes for Us. And that deadpan rock cover version of Danny Boy is a genuine deadpan highlight. The teen melodrama part of the film, as stale and as halting as it is, succeeds mainly due to the charming and humorous performances of Kim and Go Min-see as her best friend/talent manager. That being said though this is an entertaining film. The titular subversion comes into play here in a way that reveals a level of trickery that seems more of a commentary and a self-satisfied “hey, look what I just did!” on the scriptwriter’s part than a genuinely-earned character or plot aspect. The film rewards its patient viewers with an extended set piece in its closing act of super-powered, inventive violence and action. When it makes it big reveal it is to a total lack of surprise as it has made too many clumsily inserted allusions already.

The problem with The Witch Part 1 is that it holds back and suppresses its true nature for far too long. When done well genre mash-ups can be an invigorating jolt, the recent Overlord combined World War 2 action flick with body horror to satisfying results and it is hard to forget the genuine surprise some viewers experienced when they somehow did not know that From Dusk ‘til Dawn involved a cadre of vampires popping in halfway through to steer the film in an entirely new direction. And then she sings a rock version of Danny Boy on telly. Such exposure however brings back figures, some with seemingly psychic skills and inhuman strength, from the past who have been searching for her since her escape. With the help and encouragement of her friend Myung-hee, Ja-yoon decides to enter a television talent contest. However, the audience is instead treated to the story of teenage girl Ja-yoon (Kim Da Mi) who has been raised on a farm since escaping from a sinister institution. “This is an entertaining film… mainly due to the charming and humorous performances of Kim and Go Min-see.”Ī grim credits sequence with disturbingly detailed, and more often than not seemingly authentic, photos of medical experimentation on children kicks things off suggesting that the tone being set is for a horror film. Said subversion takes an age to get through however as the film pinballs between genres in a manner that frustrates more often than it excites. Park, directing from his own screenplay here, literally makes subversion the name of the game here with this Korean actioner that is 25% Bourne style actioner, 25% X-Men style origin story and 50% teen melodrama. A film that subverted the usual rules of revenge cinema and stretched itself to extremes in terms of violent one-upmanship that has still to be matched in the years since its release.

Hoon-jung Park is known mainly in the western cinema going world for providing the screenplay for the spectacularly bloodthirsty South Korean revenge thriller I Saw the Devil. ❉ Korean genre-mashup pinballs between Bourne style actioner, X-Men style origin story and teen melodrama.

The witch part 1 the subversion cast