By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Shin Min-a, Kim Nam-hee and Kim Young-ah
Written and directed by Yeom Ji-ho
By4m Studio
It is a truism of the thriller genre that a good, scary/exciting ending can make up for a certain number of deficiencies earlier in the movie. The reverse can also be true, sadly, and there’s no better example than the new Korean production THE EYES. A remake of director Guillem Morales and producer Guillermo del Toro’s 2010 film JULIA’S EYES, it’s not perfect but reasonably engaging for the first hour and change, before falling apart into one of the most contrived, absurd—and derivative—final acts in recent memory.
THE EYES, which made its Quebec premiere at the current Fantasia International Film Festival, is doubly disappointing as it’s the sophomore feature by Yeom Ji-ho, whose charming and clever crime comedy NEXT DOOR had its well-received North American premiere at the fest’s 2022 edition. And he opens with a scary, well-realized scene in which visually impaired Seo-jin (Shin Min-a) is terrorized in her photography studio by her crazed ex-boyfriend Kim Hyun-min (Lee Seung-ryong). Incorporating blurry, disoriented shots from Seo-jin’s point of view, Yeom gets us feeling for her right away. Hyun-min is captured, but Seo-jin’s troubles are just beginning. When she goes to visit her estranged twin sister Seo-in (also played by Shin), she discovers her sibling hanging dead in her basement.
The authorities, including sympathetic cop Mi-gyung (Kim Young-ah), believe Seo-in was a suicide, but Seo-jin thinks otherwise, and we know, thanks to brief flashes of Seo-in’s fate, that she’s right. From here, Yeom builds a decent amount of investigative suspense as Seo-jin attempts to track down the culprit herself, with the help of detective Lee Do-hyuk (Kim Nam-hee). She discovers that her sister might have had a man in her life that Seo-jin was unaware of, and there’s a nicely played and staged, extended sequence at a hotel as Seo-jin seeks more clues to his identity. Every so often, flashbacks reveal how the once-close siblings came to live separate lives, and Shin does empathetic work in her dual role.
It’s not all smooth sailing along the way, though. Yeom attempts to elicit cheap red-herring thrills via Dae-ho (Son Bo-seung), Seo-in’s hulking, mentally deficient neighbor and handyman, and at one crucial moment, Lee leaves Seo-jin alone and vulnerale in a car in a creepy parking garage. The biggest problem, however, is that to these eyes, the villain’s identity was obvious the moment that character appeared on the screen. Later, there’s a scene in which they visit a certain location apropos of nothing else in the story, whose intimations spark viewer trepidation: They’re not really going to go there, are they? But they do, in spades.
It’s hard to convey just how wildly off the rails THE EYES flies in its last half hour without venturing into spoiler territory. What can be said is that the Big Reveal is not only thoroughly predictable but utterly ridiculous. There’s a lengthy scene that attempts to put us in Seo-jin’s mindset by hiding something about someone she’s interacting with, but it’s so blatantly clear what’s going on that all you can do is sit there waiting for the other shoe to drop. Once it does, Seo-jin is plunged into a protracted finale that is not only preposterous, it rips off—sorry, homages not one but two classic movies by one of the genre’s masters.
All this outlandishness might not have been so frustrating if it had at least reasonably answered the questions built up over the rest of THE EYES, but few of the explanations make much sense. Yeom might also have more rewardingly leaned into the camp factor of what he was presenting, but it’s all played disappointingly straight. There are atmospheric and stylish touches to the cinematography by Lee Tae-yun (THE MAN FROM NOWHERE) that are pleasing to the eye, but THE EYES winds up taxing the mind in all the wrong ways.
