The witch subversion part 1 full#

Saying more about the occasionally overly-complex story would spoil it, but it is safe to say that given its title and the opening images of witchcraft lore dating from the Middle Ages to wartime human experimentation, The Witch isn’t actually a witch movie, and the title is more metaphoric. He eventually leaves her be, but reports his findings to Baek, whose lackeys have been looking for Ja-yoon for a decade. On the trip to Seoul for the performance, Ja-yoon meets Gong-ja (Choi Woo-shik, Okja), who claims to know her, insisting they have a connection.

A quick fix appears in the form of a reality competition show that Ja-yoon’s bestie Myung-hee (Ko Min-shi) is sure she can win. Her only problems seem to be a lack of funds to run the farm with, and a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s. Ten years later, the girl, Ja-yoon (relative newcomer Kim Da-mi), is a clever young woman who has her small community-and her adoptive parents-wrapped around her finger. A girl gets away and collapses on a nearby farm, whose elderly owners, the Koos (Choi Jung-woo and Oh Min-hee), promptly take her in and get her patched up. Choi (Park Hee-soon, doing his best to channel Lee Byung-hun). The slaughter unfolds in blue-tinged, neo-noir light, complete with flickering bulbs and slick floors, before the action heads outside where one of just two survivors, a little boy, has been caught by Baek’s right hand, Mr. The Witch opens in a hospital facility with a wholesale massacre of (grab your pearls) children at the behest of steely Professor Baek (Cho Min-soon, star of Kim Ki-duk’s divisive Pieta).

The witch subversion part 1 full#

Park has help in the form of influences ranging from Kick-Ass to Hanna and maybe The Man from Nowhere, and even though he relies on a hoary plot device that is well past its best-by date (we use 100% of our brains, full stop), the concoction he’s come up with is just original enough to earn a place in the Korean crime-revenge-thriller canon.

The writer-director probably still best known for penning Kim Jee-woon’s bloody, torture orgy I Saw the Devil reels in the gore here (don’t worry, it’s not totally banished) in order to focus more squarely on the central character’s badass awakening. The Subversion, an often mesmerizing, occasionally kooky but thoroughly entertaining thriller from Park Hoon-jung. What do you get when you mix a classic Bond villain and some crackpot science into a Korean revenge thriller? You get The Witch: Part 1.