“The Anchor” Theatrical Poster
Director: Jeong Ji-Yeon
Cast: Chun Woo-Hee, Shin Ha-Kyun, Lee Hye-Young, Cha Rae-Hyoung, Park Ji-Hyun, Nam Moon-Chul, Im Sung-Jae, Kim Young-Pil, Lee Hae-Woon
Running Time: 111 min.
By Paul Bramhall
There’s something morbidly entertaining about those movies which take a character and put them through the wringer to a point that they become completely unhinged. Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Christian Bale in American Psycho, Natalie Portman in Black Swan – the cinematic landscape is full of classic examples that see characters pushed to breaking point, and often the journey to reach that point is as unnerving as the events that unfold once they inevitably snap. One of my favorite Korean movies deals with the same theme in the form of 2004’s Faceless Beauty, that sees Kim Hye-soo in the lead role of a woman suffering from a personality disorder, and the consequences that result from her being hypnotized by a psychiatrist. Almost 20 years later, director and scriptwriter Jung Ji-yeon has revisited similar territory with her debut movie The Anchor.
Cast as the titular anchor of the title, actress Chun Woo-hee’s (Unlocked, Idol) role choices always make her worth watching, and here she plays the announcer on a popular TV channel’s coveted nine o’clock news broadcast. After receiving a mysterious call moments before going on air from a woman claiming she and her daughter are about to be killed, once the broadcast wraps Woo-hee decides to go to the address the woman provided to validate the fact everyone dismissed it as a prank call. Finding the bodies of both the mother and the daughter, when the police declare it a murder-suicide she decides to start investigating herself, however things start to get creepy when visions of the dead mother start afflicting Woo-hee in her daily life.
Life already wasn’t easy at home. Separated from her husband, Woo-hee’s stress is confounded further by that of her constantly haranguing mother who pushes her deeper into the investigation, believing that if she can get to the bottom of the deaths it’ll be her big break. Played by Lee Hye-young (In Front of Your Face, The Devil’s Game), her role as a pushy alcoholic mother makes for an effective contrast to Woo-hee’s calmer and more collected anchor, and the tensions between the pair frequently boil over. After a chance meeting with the victim’s psychiatrist played by Shin Ha-kyun (Extreme Job, Empire of Lust), Woo-hee agrees to be hypnotised by him, believing that the truth could be buried in her memory of visiting the scene. However Ha-kyun himself seems to be hiding something, and it appears that Woo-hee could be unknowingly playing straight into the hands of the killer.
For a directorial debut Jung Ji-yeon juggles a lot of different genre elements with a steady hand. The workplace pressure of having someone waiting in the wings eager to take your role feel reminiscent of the scenarios played out in the likes of Hong Won-chan’s Office and Kim Tae-yong’s Misbehavior, while the ghostly appearances resort to jump scares that anyone familiar with the genre will see coming. The fact that The Anchor feels like it only flits with its genre influences on a surface level – be it horror, psychological, or murder mystery – could be seen both ways. Either a welcome trade off that allows the story to unfold in an organic way, or a disappointment that it fails to fully commit to any single one of them, the most obvious being that of horror.
While genre blending was something Korea seemed to successfully do time and time again in the 2000’s, as the industry has become more commercialised it’s not a trait that has disappeared, but rather one which is no longer executed with the same finesse that we used to see. In The Anchor such disparate elements as family drama, mystery, and supernatural horror are thrown together, but the switches between them result in the pacing feeling uneven, and the sense of momentum that the audience should be feeling towards the conclusion feels lacking.
Things aren’t helped by yet another underwhelming role for Shin Ha-kyun. One of the defining faces of the Korean Wave in the 2000’s, Ha-kyun’s memorable turns in the likes of Guns and Talks, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Save the Green Planet and Thirst made him an actor that always seemed up for a challenge. However since the mid-2010’s Ha-kyun has increasingly found himself playing rather vanilla and uninspired supporting or villain roles in the likes of Big Match and The Villainess (not to mention headlining 20th Century Fox’s disastrous foray into the Korean market with 2013’s Running Man). Here his psychiatrist character is yet another bland performance which feels like it could have been played by anyone, and the opportunity to instil a sense of mystery around his motivations feels sourly lacking.
With that being said, as tried and tested as the horror tropes may be, it does provide a welcome change to see them play out in a brightly lit newsroom, rather than the familiar dark environments audiences are used to seeing such ghostly happenings unfold in. The Anchor is at its best when it’s able to take full advantage of the double threat facing Woo-hee – that of a violent apparition that seems intent on strangling her live on air, combined with the risk that her on-air behavior will result in losing everything she’s worked so hard for.
Ultimately though Ji-yeon’s debut as a director feels a little too transparent in what it’s looking to achieve, which sees the biggest issue with The Anchor being that it places its cards on the table a little too early in the narrative. While on paper Ji-yeon’s script may appear to be playing them close to its chest, onscreen it doesn’t quite translate, and the way certain characters interact (or don’t interact) with each other will have those who possess even a passing familiarity with psychological thrillers able to predict the ending. With such narratives dependant on the audience being the last to know what’s really going on, the fact that The Anchor allows the viewer to guess what’s happening before any of the characters feels like a detriment. As a result, the cathartic denouncement that the previously mentioned examples of the genre so successfully led up to, here ends up being somewhat of a muted anti-climax.
This is exasperated by the fact the final scenes place a high level of importance on a plot point that’s barely mentioned (and is literally found on the floor in an earlier scene), suggesting that the overall message was a different one than what most of the narrative has been focused on until this point. Diverging from horror or mystery territory all together, it seems that Ji-yeon wanted to use the plot as a framework around the importance of family, sending the eventual reveal into misplaced melodrama at odds with everything we’ve seen so far. While Korean cinema is frequently guilty of plunging into teary eyed melodramatics when it comes to finales (see the horror The 8th Night and action flick Confession of Murder for similar examples), it never makes it any easier to digest when the jarring tonal shift comes along, and certainly here it’s no different.
By the time the credits roll I was left with the distinct impression that Ji-yeon is going to be a talent to look out for in the future. The Anchor wrestles with a lot of ideas and genres, but its biggest mystery has been done enough times before for audiences to see through it fairly early in the runtime. It’s to Ji-yeon’s credit that for the most part the narrative remains engaging, and most will see it through to the end. While the final direction the plot goes in makes the focus and pacing seem a little off, Woo-hee anchors (pun intended) proceedings with another stellar performance, enabling The Anchor to remain watchable even through some of its rougher patches.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10
I do like the concept. Maybe this movie would have worked better if the supernatural elements were removed and focused more on the psychological.