Review of Sea Fog (2014) by Steve W — 08 Nov 2016

This movie certainly didn't end up the way I expected heading into it. I was expecting more of a traditional 'fight against the elements' where the crew, and the immigrants they've been hired to smuggle into South Korea, struggle to make it out of a severe storm that will push everyone to their limits.

Color me surprised when it turns out to be something far more different than that. This is both good and bad. The good is that the film, while not completely subversive, has more tricks up its sleeves than I even gave them credit for.

The bad is that what comes from it, and there's no way to talk about this without spoiling what happened, is that what comes from its unpredictability might not have necessarily been as good as they had intended.

I'm not saying that focusing on a storm that the crew and immigrants had to survive was better, but I'm not quite sure where you could have taken this movie if it wasn't what they did or the option of it being a storm.

So, essentially, what happened was that the immigrants, minus one woman that one of the sailors took a liking to and kept in the engine room for warmth, were put into the fishhold so that another approaching boat didn't know they were smuggling immigrants.

Well, it so happens that some gas from a fridge, or something, leaked and it has killed all of the immigrants in the hold, minus, of course, the woman that was in the engine room. I was genuinely not expecting this to happen and it kinda took me by surprise.

This is where the movie really reveals where it's headed and it sees the rest of the crew sort of losing their mind and doing whatever it takes, including killing each other, to make sure that what happened on their ship does not get out.

I don't know how I really felt about this little 'twist' in the narrative. It's not a horror movie, not in the slightest, it's more a narrative on human nature and how some people, I won't say most, in this same situation would resort to the very same tactics employed by these sailors.

But it's interesting in that part of it feels so out of place for the movie we had seen prior to that point. I'm not saying that it's ever bad, at any point. Not even close, just that I didn't know if it was the best direction to take for the narrative.

With that said, I still did very much like the movie. I feel it's nothing more than just a good movie, perhaps it could have been better, but I liked it. While I had certain issues with the narrative twist, I still told it was a solidly told story, for what they wanted it to be at least.

It got all its points across. What I liked is the fact that there was a lot of potential, with this type of story, to resort to melodramatics and they hold back from it, for the most part. There might be a seen here and there, but it's not like it's exploitative or anything like that.

When you see a South Korean movie without any sort of melodrama, that's something to applaud. Just throwing it out there. Perhaps I'm too harsh on that aspect of their films, but it's something that drives me up the wall.

Anyway, props to this movie for not resorting to cheap dramatics. The acting is more than strong as well, no complaints there. I don't have much else to say really. This movie is certainly good, and it takes some interesting turns with its story.

I can't say those twists always benefit the movie, but I'd still give this a slight recommendation.