The movie starts out with what is an obviously unreliable narrator. But then there are a couple of points in the story where we find out that regardless of the narrator's problems, there is something more going on. So that makes for some pretty good suspense.
Midway through the movie there is a sort of race scene where one character has to get into a bedroom before the other one does in order to pretend to be asleep. It's a scene that's been done to death in a hundred other movies before and it was at that point that the movie starts to go downhill - instead of something innovative the writer went with an uninspired cliche.
Unfortunately the climax of the movie relies on a suspension of disbelief that is beyond anything even remotely plausible. Without getting into spoilers the actual murders are just too dumb to be believed. The first one alone relies on a character making the stupidest possible choice at every single turn. But then the second murder happens exactly the same way. Puh-lease! I just couldn't get past how lazy, dumb and contrived it was. It really drags the entire movie down.
And then the movie ends on a gratuitous flashback showing that the murderer met his victims in more innocent times. Its a cool idea but the execution was utterly lazy because the writer didn't bother to set up any explanation for it beyond pure coincidence, they just threw it in out of nowhere in order to be cute.
In the end, this movie is a disappointment. The best korean thrillers stand above the best from all other countries. But this one has too many flaws due to contrived and lazy writing. Its 2nd tier at best.
Midway through the movie there is a sort of race scene where one character has to get into a bedroom before the other one does in order to pretend to be asleep. It's a scene that's been done to death in a hundred other movies before and it was at that point that the movie starts to go downhill - instead of something innovative the writer went with an uninspired cliche.
Unfortunately the climax of the movie relies on a suspension of disbelief that is beyond anything even remotely plausible. Without getting into spoilers the actual murders are just too dumb to be believed. The first one alone relies on a character making the stupidest possible choice at every single turn. But then the second murder happens exactly the same way. Puh-lease! I just couldn't get past how lazy, dumb and contrived it was. It really drags the entire movie down.
And then the movie ends on a gratuitous flashback showing that the murderer met his victims in more innocent times. Its a cool idea but the execution was utterly lazy because the writer didn't bother to set up any explanation for it beyond pure coincidence, they just threw it in out of nowhere in order to be cute.
In the end, this movie is a disappointment. The best korean thrillers stand above the best from all other countries. But this one has too many flaws due to contrived and lazy writing. Its 2nd tier at best.