Review of I Saw the Devil (2010) by Walter M — 06 Mar 2012

When Joo-yun(Oh San-ha)'s car breaks down, she does the right thing by staying inside to wait for the tow truck. However, that does not stop Kyung-chul(Choi Min-sik) from breaking in and killing her, even after she tells him that she is pregnant. After her head is found, her fiance Soo-hyun(Lee Byung-hun), of the secret service, calmly tells his superiors that he will need two weeks off to deal with his grief. At the same time, he is given the names of the four leading suspects for her murder...

There is no denying that "I Saw the Devil" is nasty fun at times with its cat and mouse games and director Kim Ji-woon again displays excellent proficiency in filmmaking. But the extreme violence on display here reminds why I usually do not care for horror movies, not so much for the general ickiness, but for the almost non-value placed on human life, especially that of women, and not just by the bad guys.(Say what you will about the television show of "Spartacus" but there is a point there about the slicing and dicing.) Maybe Soo-hyun is just numb but it is also clear that he put a lot of thought into setting up his plan without considering all of the ramifications. As other characters try to reach him psychologically, but only when he is beyond the point of no return, they are only able to make obvious statements of how vengeance dehumanizes everybody involved, thus allowing the filmmaker to cover his backside.