“The 8th Night” Netflix Poster
Director: Kim Tae-Hyung
Writer: Kim Tae-Hyung
Cast: Lee Sung-Min, Park Hae-Joon, Kim You-Jung, Nam Da-Reum, Han Sang-Chul, Lee Eol
Running Time: 150 min.
By Paul Bramhall
The streaming service Netflix is increasingly becoming the platform for new Korean horror to debut on, with the likes of #Alive, The Call, and Svaha: The Sixth Finger all premiering with just a few clicks of the remote over the last couple of years. The latest to hit the platform in 2021 comes in the form of The 8th Night, the directorial debut of Kim Tae-hyung, and a production that feels like it owes a few nods of the head to its contemporary Svaha: The Sixth Finger (and thanks to Netflix, both can be binged back-to-back!).
Like Jang Jae-hyeon’s dose of Buddhist related mysticism, Tae-hyung looks to apply the same approach, with an animated opening that explains how 2500 years ago there was a demon with red and black eyes that endlessly tormented humans. Thankfully Buddha was having none of it, so plucked out both of its eyes, rendering the demon powerless. To ensure it never had a chance of bothering the earthly realm again, both eyes were placed in individual caskets, with the red eye being buried in the deserts of the Middle East, and the black eye protected in the mountains of the Far East (specifically, as you can probably guess, Korea). Unfortunately a mad Korean professor played by Choi Jin-ho (The Swordsman, Gangnam Blues) has been looking to locate the red eye, and during an archaeological dig finally hits the jackpot.
At this point you may think why would the professor travel all the way to the Middle East when he could have looked for the black eye on home soil, but the plot of The 8th Night isn’t concerned with such details. As happy as he is, it proves to be short-lived as what we assume to be reputable publications believe the find is a fake replica (told via the patented newspaper clippings montage), so much so that it seems to be no issue to let him keep the casket and its accompanying tablet at home. Of course there’s only one way to prove them wrong – perform an ancient blood ritual complete with some unintelligible chanting, and summon the red eye back to life in the modern world! That doesn’t bode well for the monks looking after the black eye back in Korea, who sense the awakening of the red eye, and put everything on the line to stop the eyes being reunited.
In case you haven’t surmised already, The 8th Night is a far cry from the unsettling horror of The Wailing or even the foreboding atmosphere of Svaha: The Sixth Finger, instead announcing itself as a kind of 80’s influenced B-movie straight out of the gates. The problem with The 8th Night though, is that it doesn’t know it is one, lacking any kind of self awareness and seemingly believing itself to be a legitimate piece of horror filmmaking. The result is a movie which takes itself far too seriously, laced with a sprinkling of scenes which deliver moments of unintentional humour, serving to break up the monotony of everything else.
After the monk who’s been guarding the black eye (played by Lee Eol – Open City, H) passes away, it’s left to a young apprentice who’s taken a vow of silence (played by Nam Da-reum – Sinkhole, Kundo: Age of the Rampant) to track down a former exorcist monk who could hold the key to defeating the demon. The problem is the former monk has put his Buddhist life behind him after losing his family in a car accident, and now quietly works on construction sites while carrying the burden of countless souls on his back who he’s long since lost the will to help. Played by Lee Sung-min (The Man Standing Next, The Witness), his usual screen presence here finds itself dialled back thanks to the script requiring he keep an emotionless poker face for much of the runtime.
As expected Sung-min and Da-reum eventually team up and decide to track down the Virgin Shaman, one of the 7 vessels the black eye has to possess (at the rate of 1 per day, hence the title) in order to achieve its supreme level of evilness. What Da-reum doesn’t know is that Sung-min plans to kill her, with the logic being her sacrifice will be for the greater good. That’s ultimately what The 8th Night comes down to – world weary monk and enthusiastic apprentice come together to stop a body swapping demon. For all that’s at stake though, for much of the runtime the events onscreen lack any real sense of urgency. Da-reum, who’s been acting predominantly in K-drama’s since the age of 6 (he was 19 at the time of release), plays his character as someone giddy over enjoying ice-cream for the first time, and ogling at girls decked out in lycra, while Sung-min often looks visibly bored.
Speaking of cliched characters, Park Hae-joon (Bring Me Home, Heart Blackened) also enters the fray as the patented frazzled detective, whose job is to look like he’s already had a weeks’ worth of stress before arriving in any scene he appears in. Bodies are turning up in various states of the grotesque, and showing signs of decomposition that belie their recent time of death, and what’s with those golf ball sized craters in their skulls? Of course for the audience we know it’s the pesky eyeball doing it’s thing, and it’s one of The 8th Night’s biggest crimes that we never actually get to see it doing exactly that (watching a floating eyeball forcibly hit someone in the head so hard it lodges itself in their skull could have been a highlight).
The narrative itself is structured across the 8 nights the title alludes to, complete with onscreen title cards to tell us how far along we are, although the timing device doesn’t seem to make anyone any more hurried the closer we get to the 8th night. When a sense of urgency is attempted to be instilled, it’s through the frankly dumb decision of having Da-reum decide to save the Virgin Shaman (played by Kim Yoo-jung – Commitment, Haeundae), and head off to his temple in the mountains where the black eye is kept. So basically presenting the demon with a double whammy of both the last vessel it needs to possess, as well as its other eye, all in the one location. In terms of creating empathetic characters, it’s fair to say that director Kim Tae-hyung still needs more practice.
By this point we’ve also been introduced to the character of Hae-joon’s brother, played by Kim Dong-young (Believer, The Age of Shadows), who’s become the latest victim to be possessed by the eyeball. Cue conflicted scenes between brothers, and indeed the arrival of Crimes of Korean Cinema #64 – the descent into a melodramatic finale. Despite everything indicating otherwise, I’d been hoping that The 8th Night would at least embrace its B-movie roots for the finale and give us a ridiculous black and red eyed monster, or at the very least a battle against a pair of flying eyeballs. We get neither. Instead, everyone’s left to face the demons of their past, and sure enough the script has let us know by now that everyone has some past trauma that’s been preventing them from moving forward.
Sung-min may have come in armed with a blessed axe and wearing steel prayer beads as a knuckle duster, but it’s a bout of his histrionic wailing that really steals the limelight, as Tae-hyung’s script reveals a number of ridiculous K-drama like connections between key characters. We even get Lee Eol as the departed old monk, who keeps on turning up like Obi Wan Kenobi to dispense some pearls of wisdom. The demon, who’s only threat seems to be making the characters it possesses grin like idiots and sniff people like a dog, sadly doesn’t get a chance to show itself, and ultimately the audience is left with the feeling that it was never really much of a threat in the first place.
I’m usually forgiving towards directorial debuts, but there’s not much in The 8th Night to indicate we should pay attention to anything Kim Tae-hyung does next. Devoid of tension, overly serious, and a missed opportunity to have fun with a plot that offered up plenty of chances to do so, The 8th Night is a painful endurance test, although probably not as painful as being hit in the skull by a self-propelled demonic eyeball.
Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 4/10
