Witch: Part 1. The Subversion, The (2018) Review

“The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion” Korean Theatrical Poster

Director: Park Hoon-Jung
Cast: Kim Da-Mi, Jo Min-Soo, Choi Woo-Sik, Go Min-Si, Park Hee-Soon, Da-Eun, Choi Jung-Woo, Oh Mi-Hee, Kim Byung-Ok, Lee Joo-Won, Kim Ha-Na
Running Time: 125 min.

By Paul Bramhall

As 2018 draws close to an end, the appetite for female driven action movies doesn’t seem to be waning in the West or the East. Warner Brothers appear to know this, so for their latest foray into the Korean market (following on from Age of Shadows and A Single Rider), they’ll be no doubt hoping to create a new kind of femme fatale. Featuring the unwieldy English title of The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion, (which is notably broader than its Korean title, which simply translates to The Witch), this latest entry into the cannon of Korean action goes for a genre mash-up, combining everything from sci-fi to horror to teenage drama.

Directed and written by Park Hoon-jung, while less than 10 years ago Hoon-jung’s calling card was being known as the man who wrote the scripts for I Saw the Devil and The Unjust, in just a short space of time TW:P1.TS (as I’ll refer to it from now on) is already his fifth time sitting in the director’s chair. After a modest debut with 2010’s period piece The Showdown, Hoon-jung really marked himself as a director to look out for with his 2012 sophomore feature The New World. While his preceding work has fallen short of the promise shown in his gritty gangster epic, with both 2015’s Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale and 2016’s V.I.P. being bloated exercises in clunkiness and cliché, seeing him take on the subject matter of his latest got the best of my curiosity.

The opening of TW:P1.TS sets a tone that for many will hark back the grizzly mayhem found in I Saw the Devil, as we witness the aftermath in a hospital room of a group of children brutally massacred during the night, blood sprayed up the walls and every other surface in sight. Overseen by an emotionless professor (Jo Min-soo, star of Pieta) and her right hand man (Park Hee-soon, who also featured in Hoon-jung’s The Showdown and V.I.P.), we soon learn that 2 of the children have gotten away – one a little boy who is quickly captured, and the other a little girl, who escapes into the dense forest surrounding the facility. Eventually collapsing from exhaustion by a nearby farm, she’s discovered by the elderly owner (Choi Jun-woo, who also featured in V.I.P.) as he puts out feed for his cattle before dawn breaks, and ends up being raised by him and his wife in a small rural town. So far, so Smallville.

Skip forward 10 years later, and the girl is now 19 with a reputation for being a high performer at school (I guess kids never leave school in Korea), and no memories of what took place before she was found outside the farm. Played by newcomer Kim Da-mi, the events in the present make for a jarring tonal shift from the brutal blood soaked opening. Da-mi makes for an endearing protagonist, and her performance anchors the not particularly engaging events that the first half of TW:P1.TS busies itself with – funds for the farm are running low, cattle prices are dropping, and Da-mi’s adopted Mum is developing Alzheimer’s. However a solution for all of the above comes along in the form of a reality TV show, think a Korean version of American Idol, which her best friend (played with an annoying level of enthusiasm by Go Min-si) is certain she can win, an outcome which would see her pocketing the sizable prize money.

Going from kids who’ve been bludgeoned to death to watching auditions for a talent show may seem like night and day, however the show does serve a narrative purpose. When the producers ask Da-mi if she has any unique talents, a brief display of her gifts on national TV puts her firmly back on the radar, one which belongs to those who’ve been attempting to track her down for the past 10 years. Hoon-jung has essentially made a big budget version, one which feels largely aimed at a teenage audience, of the ‘character with a dark past attempting to make a new life for themselves’ plot trope. Indeed the plot is almost identical to a recent indie movie, Kill Order (even down to the memory loss aspect), as well as recalling other similarly structured action flicks such as Broken Path and Ninja Assassin.

Soon Da-mi finds herself the focus of unwanted attention from a guy who claims to know her (Choi Woo-shik, Okja), and the more their paths cross, the more it becomes clear he’s not just an overly attached fan. Armed with a quick to escalate temper, an irritating habit of interjecting English into the middle of conversations, and strength far beyond that of a normal human, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Woo-shik really is. So the stage is set – will Da-mi be able to remember in time to save her adopted family? What exactly is so special about her to still be being hunted 10 years on? And what are these characters anyway – mutants, superheroes, psychopaths!? Hoon-jung keeps us hanging on until well over an hour in, and when an explanation does come, it arrives in the form of a laughably long exposition dump courtesy of Jo Min-soo. Put it down to being an occupational hazard of a screen writer becoming a director.

Thankfully though the second half attempts to deliver on the action front as well as the exposition, after spending over an hour developing plot threads that are ultimately superfluous to the type of movie TW:P1.TS really is. Da-mi’s awakened capabilities are fun to watch if unsurprising – she can shoot a room full of people in a split second (thanks John Wick), and turns out to not be such a weakling in the strength department either. Hoon-jung seems to revel in cranking up the gore factor, with liberal use of fake blood, and limbs being broken with ruthless abandon. We even get a greenhouse scene thrown in, recalling a similar environment that was used to great effect in I Saw the Devil. Despite the visceral brutality of the action though, it’s hard to shake the feeling of it being derivative of other similarly themed local productions, just with more of the red stuff to set it apart.

Da-mi’s efficiency brings to mind Kim Ok-bin’s stellar turn in The Villainess, and her super-powered capabilities feel more than a little similar to Park Bo-young’s reveal in The Silenced. However unlike both of those movies, Hoon-jung’s latest falls short of having clearly defined villains with their own objectives. Beyond the fact that they’ve been attempting to track down Da-mi since she escaped 10 years ago, we don’t really get to know a whole lot about the shadowy characters who’ve been experimenting on kids. Why are they doing it, and what have they been doing for the past 10 years? Presumably it can’t have been only looking for Da-mi, as the farm isn’t geographically that far from the facility she escaped from (she was able to run there, after all).

Instead of focusing on their motivations, Hoon-jung’s script ends up stumbling over itself, by adding too much complexity, and inserting meaningless subplots between the villains that serve little to no purpose. A conflict forms between Min-soo and Park Hee-soon, playing her right hand man, which is never really explored, and the finale introduces a trio of other super-powered teenagers, that join Woo-shik to take on Da-mi. Out of all the characters that end up throwing down against each other, only a couple of them have clear goals, and even those only work in the context of what little information we’ve been given. While the magic of cinema does a great job of making Da-mi come across as a primitive force of nature, there’s a lack of catharsis to much of the bloodshed, because too many questions still remain to feel fully invested in the chaos.

What can’t be argued is that TW:P1.TS marks the arrival of a fresh new talent in the form of Kim Da-mi, who navigates the awkward tonal shifts that the 2 hour runtime encompasses with aplomb, and sells every scene she’s in – whether it be singing in a talent show, or beating a lackey’s face to a blood soaked pulp. Hoon-jung has created an interesting premise, however the amount of time spent on certain plot threads is disproportionate to what his story is really about, making it an uneven and occasionally bewildering viewing experience. While the Part 1 may be missing from the Korean title, the final scene makes it clear that another instalment should be on the way, likely dependent on this one being a success at the box office. If we do get another round of witchery, here’s hoping Hoon-jung go’s for a less is more approach, with more focus on being lean and mean, and less on everything else.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 5.5/10