Superpower Girl (2017) User Reviews

high school life in the skin of parable

[Kirpianuscus · 10 January 2020]

It is strange to define it as horror. It can be a parable or wise exploration of highschool life, from the hero of the class to the bulying and cruel teacher. The end is poetic and reflects what is normal to see in the other, his special gift - power and the manner to support him. A film about pressures and about the need to be accepted. Short, splendid work, good point for reflection.

The Eyes Which Cannot Be Closed

[aderain · 9/10 · 15 December 2020]

To see how a film responds to narratocracy, one must first assume the type of narrative being expected from the film by way of its genre and narrative tradition. In Superpower Girl, this could at least be gleaned from its youth oriented themes of identity crisis, bullying, academic stress and rivalry. When the transwoman teacher first broached the idea of the larva being able to crawl, for whatever illuminating suggestions it could propose such as the idea of self-discovery and empowerment (the trans herself being a walking example of such metamorphosis), this scene should have provided the film its springboard towards a narrative of such educational quality, but chooses to elide it by going instead to the direction of the uncanny via the haptic and visceral. Instead of teaching the value of golden mean important in the context of Korean competitive culture, we were given the image and the visceral experience of a pair of eyes that cannot be closed (Mina as the negative example of moderation and her eyes as perhaps a counter response to Sadako's "blink"). Such eyes which cannot help but absorb everything even the spectral creatures in her head (the bugs from the white ceiling) and the thoughts his drunken father harbors but which she also cannot help but be aware of in her constant awakened state. Such eyes which could not also help but address the viewers own scopophilia, where the viewers eyes must also remain open throughout the film which is thankfully a short one. This uncanniness, in the end, only "resolved" by another uncanniness, i.e. Juri's suturing ability, which again, serves another haptic moment when viewers finally discovered what the stitching activities of the bloodied needle has come to encompass.