Ghost in Love (1999) Review

“Ghost in Love” Theatrical Poster

Director: Lee Kwang-Hoon
Writer: Hong Ju-ri
Lee Sung-Jae, Kim Hee-Seon, Cha Seung-Won, Yoo Hye-Jung, Jang Jin-Young, Lee Young-Ja, Park Kwang-Jung, Jeong Won-Jung, Jang Se-Jin
Running Time: 91 min.

By Paul Bramhall

1999 was a landmark year for Korean cinema. After starting the 90’s with a film industry practically on its last legs, throughout most of the decade it slowly began to regain popularity with local audiences, before finally, on the cusp of the millennium, it gained international recognition with the release of Shiri. Since then Korean cinema hasn’t looked back, and like Korea was greatly influenced by the ‘Hong Kong Wave’ of the early 90’s, so the world sat up and paid attention to the ‘Korean Wave’ which the early 00’s came to be referred to as. However Shiri wasn’t the only Korean movie made in 1999. The movie that got me into Korean cinema in the first place, Nowhere to Hide, also graced the big screen, as did the fantasy romance Ghost in Love.

Much like Hong Kong and Japan, although its film industry was nowhere near as stable as either, Korea spent the 90’s seeing what it could do with the new kid on the block – CGI. From it’s first use in Park Heon-soo’s 1994 supernatural romance The Fox with Nine Tails, other directors soon also embraced the technology. Kang Je-gyu, who’d go on to direct Shiri, infused CGI into his 1996 supernatural thriller The Gingko Bed, as did Park Kwang-chun in 1998’s horror hybrid The Soul Guardians. In 1999, quite possibly influenced by the 1998 Hollywood production What Dreams May Come, director Lee Kwang-hoon decided to see how far CGI could go in creating what the afterlife would look like with Ghost in Love.

It always surprises me how few of the directors working in the 90’s lasted once the Korean Wave really took off, and Kwang-hoon is no exception. After debuting with the comedy drama Doctor Bong in 1995, he’d direct his sophomore feature in similar fashion with 1997’s Repechage, which cast Kim Hee-seon as the lead. He’d maintain Hee-seon as the lead for Ghost in Love, which would mark his third feature, before going onto direct Legend of the Evil Lake in 2003. He disappeared from the Korean film industry after its release, and hasn’t been heard of since.

Thankfully Hee-seon is still around, although she hasn’t appeared on the big screen for a long time. Repechage was her debut and Ghost in Love only her 2nd appearance onscreen. She looked like she had a bright career ahead in the film industry, with her roles in the likes of 2000’s Bichunmoo and 2001’s Wanee and Junah making both productions all the better thanks to her presence. In 2005 she appeared alongside Jackie Chan in The Myth, at a time when many HK productions seemed to acknowledge the growing popularity of Korea by including Korean actors in the cast, however since then Hee-seon has stuck to TV dramas, leaving the big screen behind.

The plot of Ghost in Love still shows some influence of the HK Wave, in that it’s all over the place in terms of genre, tone, and even where our focus should be, but I’ll try to break it down as concisely as possible. See-heon plays the fiancé to an ambitious young business man played by Cha Seung-won (Believer, Man in High Heels) in an early screen role. When she finds out he’s cheating on her with the daughter of his boss, she contemplates suicide, but before she can decide is pushed in front of a train by a pair of black suited gentlemen, who turn out to be recruiters for the Suicide Ghost Club (SGC) of the afterlife. They’re under pressure to get their sales figures up, hence sometimes lend a helping hand to those on the fence about if they’ll go through with offing themselves.

Members of the SGC can still visit the earthly realm, however if they interfere they find themselves being hunted down by Messengers, a kind of after-life police force governed by Hades. Oh, they also have to avoid monsters who have an appetite for ghosts. While hanging around in what I presume is the SGC headquarters (essentially, an office building) See-heon meets various other members – there’s a woman who committed suicide because she was taunted for being fat, and another who killed herself after being gang raped. There’s also a man whose past is shrouded in mystery, but acts as a kind of moral compass to some of the more vengeful members, who include See-heon. Played by Lee Sung-jae (Daisy, Human, Space, Time and Human) in another early screen appearance, he does his best to stop See-heon from doing anything that’ll put her in the Messengers line of fire, but it proves to be easier said than done.

The description alone is probably enough to give an idea of just how wild the tonal swings can get, but in many ways they act in Ghost in Love’s favour. The SGC recruiters, played by Dong Bangwoo (The Battle of Jangsari) and Park Kwang-jung (Princess Aurora), play their roles broadly, almost as if they’ve been beamed directly from an Elton Chong movie. For the most part they stay just on the right side of irritation, barely. It’s in stark contrast to the gang raped SGC member, played by Yoo Hye-jeong, who on earth becomes a long-nailed spirit of vengeance, decapitating one of her assailant’s crown jewels and thrusting her hand straight through the chest of another, leaving a trail of blood in her wake. Pursing all of them are a pair of Messengers, played by Jang Se-jin (My Wife is a Gangster) and Chung Won-joong (Steel Rain), whose mission is to catch and kill them again in the afterlife as punishment.

In the midst of all this, is the relationship between See-heon and Sung-jae, as he attempts to stop her from possessing innocents in order to question Seung-won on why he cheated, and keep her off the Messengers radar at the same time. In short, there’s a lot going on, however the punchy 90 minute runtime (yes, Korean movies where once only 90 minutes!) ensures there’s never a lull in the pace. There’s romance, violence, chase scenes, comedy, tension, and it all somehow adds up to more than the sum of its parts. In many ways Ghost in Love can be seen as a precursor to the more recent Along with the Gods franchise (The Two Worlds and The Last 49 Days). Both use the afterlife as a theme, and both stampede through a variety of genres with reckless abandon.

Of course the CGI in Ghost in Love is a far cry from that in Along with the Gods, with the first 45 minutes feeling like a highly dated showcase of everything that could be done with the technology at the time. We get railways tracks coming down from the sky, face morphing, afterlife landscapes, and one spirit even uses the water from a water dispenser to take on human form. Where it maintains its charm is that it was made at a time when CGI wasn’t used for absolutely everything. The aforementioned monsters, despite only appearing briefly in a couple of scenes, are refreshingly old-school in that they’re men in suits. As old-school as it may be, the physical presence of actually having them in-camera makes them feel more real than CGI at the time ever could of.

The cast is also game for everything the script throws at them. As one of the Messengers responsible for pursing any ghost that’s interfered in the earthly realm, Jang Se-jin is a highlight. At 191cm tall, he cuts an intimidating figure whenever he’s onscreen, and much like the Ma Dong-seok’s of today, he’s one of those actors who simply looks cool in whatever he appears in. As our leads, See-heon and Sung-jae do an amicable job. The romance between them could definitely have done with a little more development, as to some degree it kind of feels like it comes out of the blue, however had that been the case it likely wouldn’t have been the crazy genre mash-up that it is, and would have fit its ‘fantasy romance’ label much easier.

Korean cinema may have come a long way since 1999, however I still have a fondness for that particular era during the mid to late 90’s, when budgets and production values were starting to increase, but the output still felt a little rough around the edges. It’s there to see in Nowhere to Hide, and arguably it’s also there in Shiri. It’s definitely there in Ghost in Love, and it’s the type of production that likely wouldn’t be made in todays climate, or at least not with the same level of energy towards the left of field tonal shifts and genre bending. Kwang-hoon’s penultimate feature as a director may be an uneven one, but it also has a lot of ambition, and certainly never fails to entertain. If you’re after a slice of Korean cinema that’s a little different from the norm, then Ghost in Love is recommended viewing.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 7/10