Review of I Saw the Devil (2010) by Griffin B — 15 Jun 2013

Really only has a skeleton of a story, or a point. After the initial setup (which is honestly pretty gripping), most of the movie involves sadistic killer Kyung-chul wandering from one situation to the next, being pursued by Soo-hyun, and doing random reprehensible things that further illustrate to the audience just how really, really bad he is (even though that was already established very effectively in the opening scene).

After awhile the repetitious encounters become tiresome, as does all the gore. The makers of this film definitely fail to grasp the "less is more" rule with horror films. After awhile you just feel numb to all the blood and violence, which is not the intended effect here, I don't think.

There are also an overabundance of elongated fight sequences in lieu of any more interesting ideas. They're well done I suppose, but after awhile I was really hoping they'd do something other than just having the two main characters beat each other up some more.

As much as I like the central themes this movie explores about the line between good and evil, and what revenge does to people, it seemed like any potential opportunity to do something interesting with them was squandered.

They get the protagonist Soo-hyun right, showing a very compelling descent into damnation, but they make his antagonist so completely awful and 100% reprehensible without a shred of any decency or really anything other than just rotten badness that it almost stands in contrast to the smarter, more nuanced, and more complex aspects of the film.

He's actually very one-note and kind of uninteresting despite being played by such a talented actor (Min-sik Choi of Oldboy fame). He might as well cackle madly and twirl a mustache. I kept hoping they'd develop him in some way but they never really do.