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Here's my thoughts about Cut, which at first I didn't like, but now I think is the best of the Three.. Extremes films. Ive watched it 3 times and every time I see more depth to it, on first viewing I thought it was just a stylish but weird horror movie. Now I see it as a David Lynch style fantasy film with the majority of the film being a dream sequence (ala Blue Velvet). From the moment The Director arrives in his home and the lights go out it becomes the directors nightmare/dream, with The Extra representing his evil side, the red elastic the morality or reality stopping him from killing and becoming one with his evil side. Here's the evidence:

1) The Director and Extra never have a conversation. They alternate in talking, usually delivering monologues (hence the films theatrical feel). Usually oneof them will speak, the other will stand/sit motionless until the next moment of drama, usually the removal or threat of removal of the next finger. They never discuss anything, speak at the same time, its like the two sides of his personality vying for supremacy.

2) This is reflected by Park's filming technique: You never see a traditional shot-reverse shot conversation (when one person of a pair talks the camera views him over the other ones shoulder, and vice-versa). There's a couple of shots where the camera focuses in close on the directors/extras head and pans up to show the other character literally coming from inside the head.

3) Similarly, the film ends with the camera spiralling towards The Director's forehead: It's all in his mind...

4) And right before that The director approaches his wife from the opposite side to where he is tied in the rest of the film, the place where The Extra was standing. The extras body has disappeared leaving a spotlessly clean space with an outline of blood. He has killed his wife and given into the evil side, the moral band band restricting him is gone.

5) Depite it obviously being a film set with no ceiling, The Director and Extra both treat it like real: The Extra says something like "I didnt know houses like this existed in Korea" and the Director replies "there are lots of better houses.." If it was reality they would both know its a film set, in his dream he cant distinguish between reality and fantasy.

6) The red band (the visualization of his morality) comes out of the wall through a painting. Specifically it comes through a bite shaped hole in one of the apples in the painting. I think it represents sin, Adam and Eve style, the whole set and contents are a dream sequence representing his guilt and sins but taken to horrific extremes.

7) Just as dreams contain elemnts of your real life jumbled together, so does the Directors nightmare. Many of the events in the dream are pre-empted in the reality sequence at the start (a bit like Mulholland Drive). The neck biting scene and piano playing wife is lifted straight from the film he's shooting, his affair he confesses to is shown in the studio and car driving home, his jealousy of the rival director shown when telling the actor dressed as a school girl not to work with said director. The man dressed as a girl reoccurs with the schoolgirl-boy, and that actors words " what about trying something other than mr nice guy, like a psycho rapist killer thing?" are very prophetic. And smaller details like the blender, the mangoes, the cd of music all feature in both reality and the dream.

So i think the situation is The Director's guilt over his sins manifested in a horrific urban horror nightmare. The extremes that eist underneath the surface of his seemingly perfect existence if you like. But overall im still really confused by why he strangles her, if he thinks its her or the kid, what the kid represents, why the kid says "I will be revenged", etc. My mate is convinced he had already killed his wife, hence the strange phonecall supposedly to his wife which fits perfectly with the phonecall the actress has in the scene he's filming at the very start of the film. I really don't know, but I do think its a great film with so much more depth than its got credit for.

Hope some of you agree with some of it at least, Id love to hear other theories wether they add to my ideas or prove them a load of rubbish. Its a great movie that gets people thinking and debating like this, look forward to reading more...