“Fallen” Theatrical Poster
Director: Lee Jung-sub
Cast: Yang Ji, Jang Tae Young, Han Sung Min, Kim Ga Hyun, Lim Jung Min, Lee Ji Yong, Hwang Se On, Yun Ha Bin, Ju Seo Eun, Oh Ji Young, Kwon Ip Sae
Running Time: 110 min.
By Paul Bramhall
In the 2019 Korean production Fallen a famous sci-fi author played by Yang Ji, previously only seen in small bit roles in late 2000’s/early 2010’s productions like I Came from Busan and Mr. Idol, is having a bad day. Opening with her as the subject of an on-camera interview for TV, despite it supposedly being about her latest work, it seems the interviewer is more interested in asking about the leaked sex tape she’s featured in, and the fact her mother is a convicted serial killer. Her publicist isn’t much help, insisting she joins him to a local bar considering she’s holed herself up at home for so long, where he suggests that the best thing she can do is to apologise to the public for appearing in the tape. Things go from bad to worse when she wakes up kidnapped, zip tied and stuffed in a drum in an unknown location, her fate in the hands of whoever has taken her captive.
Based on the above description, on paper Fallen probably sounds like it fits the mould of similar female in peril 2010’s era Korean movies like Midnight FM or Manhole, however that would be before taking into account that it’s the directorial debut of screenwriter and producer Lee Jung-sub. Also responsible for scripting 2017’s psychological neo-noir action flick Real, often unfairly sited as one of the worst Korean movies ever made, it’s this production which was originally intended to be Jung-sub’s directorial debut, however for reasons unknown he stepped back shortly after filming commenced. Arriving a couple of years later, Fallen is no less of a head trip than Real (maybe even more so), even if it’s clearly got nowhere near the same budget.
For a start, it turns out that Yang Ji isn’t the only one to have been kidnapped on that night, with everyone else from the bar also turning up in the same location. Except the fact that she’s so dishevelled, and everyone else looks exactly like they did when they were drinking together, provides the first indication that they are, in fact, all in her head. In an earlier scene Ji reveals she doesn’t like being in crowded places, since her creative instincts soon start to imagine everyone around her as characters for her next story, and that would appear to be what’s happening here.
A kidnapped novelist talking to figments of her imagination is just the start of Jung-sub’s ambitious plot though. In parallel we’re introduced to a group of delegates representing global agencies, sat around a table in the middle of a large minimalist set. They’re there to try a murderer who claims to be from 2059, the result of a sinkhole opening up in Seoul containing a portal to the past. Time travel has been made illegal in the future, the result of too many people using it since 2019 is a much more prosperous era than 2059, however the bigger issue is that AI programs have become sentient, and are downloading themselves into people in 2019 so they can take on human form. Referred to as the Fallen, the only catch is that the transition causes them to gradually become blind, so the discovery of a human with a “peculiar antibody” that can prevent it makes them a target. Kind of like Skynet, but with poor eyesight.
What does all of this have to do with an author waking up to find herself kidnapped in a drum? Why is there a random dance number involving a guy in a leotard and a whip in the middle of the movie? Are we really expected to believe that in the future blockchain controls the world and Elon Musk was right about everything all along? (That’s right, Elon Musk gets namechecked more than once thanks to his thoughts on time travel!) Much like in Real, it feels like answering every question that’s posed isn’t the primary concern, with similar themes of identity being explored in ways that, while occasionally feeling like they’ll buckle under their own weight, consistently feel original and fresh. Fallen is frequently beguiling and certainly guilty of being pretentious, but it’s also entertaining in part due to just how different it is from anything else coming out of Korea, and in part because on some level (even if it’s an astral one), it works.
The conversations Ji has with the other bar patrons in the remote warehouse she’s trapped in tend to revolve around how she can escape, with Jung-sub seemingly going for a playful approach by name checking other filmmakers when considering the approach she could take. From Hollywood alumni like Bruce Willis (specifically in Die Hard!), Michael Bay, and Ridley Scott, to more local talent like Jang Sun-woo, Won Bin, and Kang Dong-won, the name checking comes in thick and fast. In fairness I also have Fallen to thank for now knowing who Cormac McCarthy, Gary Pasparov, Lee Sedol, and Hyun Jin-geon are, so if anything I’m slightly more cultured than I was a couple of hours before (although it’s admittedly a low bar to begin with). It all feels a little gratuitous, but then again that could well be the point, with it being clear that subtlety is one of the least important aspects of Jung-sub’s work.
In fact one of the cleverer elements of his directorial debut is that the bar patrons in Ji’s head are so talkative, it’s easy to overlook the fact that for the majority of the runtime, Ji herself has barely more than a few lines of dialogue. Instead we’re watching her thoughts and personality projected onto the characters she was in the bar with, essentially having them speak for her, while barely saying a word herself. It’s indicative of Jung-sub clearly having talent as a director, and combined with also being in the producer’s chair, he finds himself in a position where he can bring his vision to the screen within the limits of his own financial means, without having to worry about compromising.
If one thing becomes apparent in Fallen, it’s how much of Jung-sub’s visual directorial style is also imprinted in Real, certainly enough to raise the question of how much creative input he had in terms of what ended up onscreen. Whereas the finale of Lee Sa-rang’s only movie ended with a ballet infused action scene, in Fallen Ji takes to some ariel silk inspired acrobatics to eventually free herself from her gender fluid cyborg captors, the parallels in the incorporation of performance art making the comparison hard to ignore. It’s a scene which segues into an extended chase sequence that makes up the finale, as Ji attempts to outrun a zombie hunting sniper from the future, before a final scene coda that reveals that Siri is responsible for saving the world.
Had Jung-sub’s directorial debut been released in the early 2000’s I’m confident it would have been able to confidently sit next to the likes of Save the Green Planet and A Bizarre Love Triangle as a similarly sci-fi infused exercise in genre blending. As a 2019 production though, after the backlash against Real it’s perhaps not surprising that Fallen had never been officially released in its native Korea, apart from when it screened as part of the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival during the same year. It’s a shame, since in a film industry that’s increasingly leaned into more conventional genre narratives during the 2020’s, Fallen stands as a truly original piece of filmmaking, even if it does occasionally entangle itself in its jumble of multi-layered plot threads.
When asked in an interview at the time of its release how he thought Fallen would be perceived 10 years in the future, Jung-sub replied that he’d “like to think that this film would be considered educational.” While we’re still 4 years away from that 10-year mark at the time of writing in 2025, I’m not sure educational will be a word that springs to mind whatever year it is, however it does end with a message of hope that acts as a reinforcement that humanity is fundamentally good. Even if some of the other messages get lost in translation, Fallen nails the landing on its most important one, and the fact that it does so through a mix of time travelling sink holes, gender fluid dancing cyborgs, and lesbian sci-fi novelists makes it an experience that’s unlikely to be repeated.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7.5/10
