Misery Breeds Misery: TRASH FIRE (2016) – Netflix Connection #4

(April 15) - June 10

Oh, man, I am so, SO late posting this damn review!

My numerous apologies to Mermaid Heather and Zombie Dawn for not holding up my end of our little movie club back in - oh, God - APRIL. Since February, the three of us have been watching a movie on Netflix every month, each of us then writing a review and posting it to our respective blogs, and then all of us talking about the film (in a usually spoiler-heavy on-line conversation). I was doing pretty good for a while there until THIS movie. Which dominoed into the next movie in May. And, of course, the accessory on-line conversation about that second movie (since it was my turn to edit/post the conversation).

Okay, okay, okay! Well, let me just get started with the first review I'm behind on before I'm tempted to start whining about the various reasons why I'm late posting it and everything else...

TRASH FIRE (2016, Written and directed by Richard Bates, Jr.; with Adrian Grenier, Angela Trimbur, Fionnula Flanagan, AnnaLynne McCord, Matthew Gray Gubler, Sally Kirkland, Molly McCook, Ray Santiago, and Ezra Buzzington)

Labeled a "comedy/dark comedy" on Netflix, TRASH FIRE starts off with us meeting Owen (played by Adrian Grenier) during one of his therapy sessions with his psychiatrist. The session does not go well.  After that, we meet his girlfriend, Isabel (Angela Trimbur), as the loving (er--?) couple have dinner out to celebrate their third anniversary together. That also does not go well. This dynamic of things not going well continues in the other scenes that rapidly follow when: he’s having sex with Isabel; they’re having breakfast with her brother (Matthew Gray Gubler from CRIMINAL MINDS) who’s in town; or they’re having dinner with her friends (Molly Cook and ASH VS. THE EVIL DEAD’s Ray Santiago). In pretty much all of these scenes, Owen is tough to take and I found him difficult to like. Okay, in the first scene when he's in therapy, I'll cut Owen's character some slack: after revealing some very personal feelings - about how he wished his parents were dead only so he could commit suicide guilt-free and then, when fate gave him dead parents, he didn’t have the guts to follow through on killing himself -  Owen discovers his psychiatrist (Sally Kirkland) has fallen asleep listening to him. Maybe I'd tell off my psychiatrist, too, if that happened to me. But after that, he just seems like a jerk. True, Isabel has her abrasive side, too, but I chalked that up to a sort of survival-mode of being Owen’s girlfriend and having to live with him. Although, I soon was getting annoyed with her for staying with him. And then, when the couple’s having yet another argument, Isabel suddenly confesses that she’s pregnant, and Owen becomes even more of a douchebag as he says some really vile things to her in an immediate reaction to the news. Grrrr!

This is how the movie starts. I found it challenging to stay with it and was starting to hate Mermaid Heather for choosing it (just kidding, Heather! I could NEVER hate you!)(seriously!). 

But OMG, the first 20-25 minutes really tested my patience.

That night, after Owen’s douchebaggery outburst, he has a fitful, nightmarish sleep and he awakens with a curiously changed heart. He embraces Isabel’s pregnancy and the idea of them raising a baby.

At this point, TRASH FIRE and I began to have a truce, although Owen still wasn’t perfect (hell, no!), he now seemed focused towards working on genuinely changing for the better, so he became... tolerable to me. To put it in terms of the late screenwriter Blake Snyder (kinda-sorta), this was Owen’s "saving the cat” moment for me, when he became likable. Although, it’s still work: Owen’s attempt at an apology to Isabel at her place of work is pretty cringe-worthy, but you get the idea that there’s some genuine attempt behind it all from Owen, so Isabel grudgingly accepts it.

However, to Isabel’s credit, she doesn’t just cave in and simply forgive and forget simply because Owen changed his mind; in fact she’s highly doubtful about the wisdom of keeping the baby now. In fact, some of Owen’s reasons for keeping the kid are not the most thought-out or logical (they really aren’t). But she’ll keep the baby IF she sees some definitive action on his part first, like, if Owen can behave like a human being to her brother and her family. But mostly, she wants him to resolve his differences with his own estranged surviving family, his grandmother Violet and his younger sister Pearl. With extreme reluctance, but willing to show Isabel the sincerity of his changed ways, Owen agrees with great anxiety.

On the long road trip to his grandmother's, Isabel gets Owen to finally talk about the details of his parents’ death and what led up to the estrangement. For the first time in their three-year relationship, she learns: how miserable his parent’s marriage was; how his father’s mania for constantly quoting scripture turned Owen against the church; about his mother’s enthusiastic promiscuity; about the accidental fire that claimed his parents' lives and destroyed their home and how Owen had unwittingly caused the tragic blaze; how Pearl was badly burned and disfigured by the fire; and how miserable a woman his grandmother was that the teenaged Owen ran away from her shortly after the funeral and took his sister with him, but because of  his youth Owen realized watching after his younger sister was too much, so he abandoned his still bandaged sister by the side of the road and continued his escape without her. And that’s the last time he’s had contact with either his grandmother or his sister.

The rest of the movie is the expectant couple’s brief stay at Violet’s house where Pearl also still lives.

About a month ago I almost had this damn review finished. Okay, it was almost a month late then, but it would have been done before our next movie had to be reviewed. But then, something stupid happened and I had to start this review from scratch. Uh... maybe I’ll get into that stupidity later.

My biggest distraction with TRASH FIRE was trying to figure out what I actually thought of it. When I first started pounding out what I thought about this movie way back in April, I was all fired up (uh, no pun intended?) to tear into it. But after venting a bit and then taking a break, curiosity got the better of me and I took a peek at my fellow reviewers’ reactions (Heather and Dawn’s writing disciplines are far better than mine), and found they weren’t nearly as hostile as I was to the movie. D'oh! Without reading their reviews in depth, I saw enough to realize that Heather’s take was more diplomatic, critical but still appreciative, while Dawn really embraced and enjoyed the extremes of the film. How interesting.

No, seriously.

So, I immediately started second-guessing myself. I re-watched parts of the film, especially those sections that bugged me the most. Now, re-watching parts of a movie while I'm still writing/wrestling with a review is actually pretty common for me lately. Usually I do it just to see if I’m remembering plot, scene elements, dialogue, etc. correctly, but in this case I was also re-assessing my first thoughts.

Our three-way (heh heh!) on-line (dammit!) conversation about the film was also constructive and helped me re-consider and also articulate some things, so all that went into the writing and re-writing of my review as well. Ultimately, my hostility towards TRASH FIRE was toned down considerably.
But, that modification was gradual and also the result of a bit of meditation on the film several days after watching it.

True, as I said, the first 20-25 minutes of the film is a bumpy ride getting used to Owen's abrasive personality and even tolerating Owen and Isabel together.
But, as I also said, I started warming up to Owen mostly because he was making an effort. Also, the addition of Violet and Pearl’s characters make the mix more interesting. Owen’s maternal grandmother, Violet (Fionnula Flanagan), happily takes the baton for being the beast our protagonists and we the audience have to deal with. Even when Violet greets them with a shotgun, that's the least of her offenses. Somehow Owen manages to stay civil in irritating exchanges with his granny, but Violet manages to actually wear down Isabel's tolerance during the stay.
And disfigured, reclusive Pearl is an intriguing mystery. Usually hiding in her room, we’re aware of her shadowy form peeking out from her window, or we see her stealing about at night when everyone’s asleep, or secretly spying on Isabel at her most intimate moments.

Although the main interest of our "film club" (aka The Netflix Connection)(okay, I’M the only one who calls it that) is in horror films - or horror-ish films - this film seems less like a horror film and more about a horrifying family. Netflix categorizes it as a "comedy/dark comedy” and there are times I'd say it's definitely dark comedy. As a fan of playwright Christopher Durang (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, The Marriage of Bette and Boo), I like dark comedies. In that vein, there were moments I thought TRASH FIRE worked very well even during my first viewing. For instance, the aforementioned therapy session with Owen’s sleepy doctor. There’s also a great moment when we see Owen and Isabel having sex yet again, but for the first time, Isabel is more impressed and aroused by his technique until she learns why, and the reason's just funny because it’s so wrong.
I’d say another genre is Southern Gothic. Okay, I’m not that well-versed in things Southern Gothic, and I’m not really sure how far south this film’s setting is located, but from what little research I’ve done on the topic, the genre includes sex, religion and violence, while told with an eye for the grotesque and darkly comic, and I think TRASH FIRE fits (in fact, during our movie chat Zombie Dawn brought up the book, Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews, a classic Southern Gothic guilty pleasure from 1979, popular enough to warrant eight books in the series).

Anyway, though I thought the film improved, by the end of the film I wish writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. had done more with Pearl and also Violet; in fact, with all four of the characters. The film seems somewhat underwritten in parts, in terms of story and character development.
Still, having said that, this film stayed with me for several days. True, part of that was because I was trying to finish this damn review and I still wasn’t sure how I ultimately felt about the film, so I kept thinking about it. But the film itself had enough material in it to genuinely generate further internal discussion, which is a credit to writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. as well as the cast. But at the same time, I think Bates also could have explained a few things better, too. Like, the skeleton under the porch, for instance. NOTE: Okay, I think Bates' acknowledges the bones' existence with a mysterious reference Pearl makes about what it's like to live with her grandmother, but I still found that unsatisfying.
Also, there’s one scene in particular which really bothered me narratively. Violet visits the pastor of her church (played by Ezra Buzzington) and she essentially makes this confession to him in his office. What triggers this is her learning that Isabel is pregnant with Owen’s child. Although this seems legitimate motivation in the context of the story, the extent of what Violet reveals also seems abrupt, as if motivated by the writer’s need to reveal more back story. In addition, there’s a snake in the office, a rattlesnake to be specific. As far as I can tell, why the snake is there is unexplained. It’s in an aquarium, like a pet. But, besides it’s presence, it also plays an important plot point, as Violet steals it for her own purposes at the end of the scene.
Okay,  I don't usually like to reveal too much about a film, but every now and then, I feel a need to do just that so SPOILER ALERT as I talk more about this (sorry!):
The whole snake thing drove me crazy at first, on a variety of levels, and I brought this up in the movie conversation. First, why a pet snake, especially in the office of a pastor ? And why a rattlesnake, versus, let's say, a boa constrictor, which I would think is like the default snake to have as a pet? It seemed that Bates simply wanted a venomous snake for plot purposes. I found these questions terribly distracting. Considering the significance of the snake in the Bible (specifically, the whole Garden of Eden story and the significance of the snake and the part it plays in that story), I found this pet snake’s arbitrary inclusion irritating. However, after a couple days of reflection, it suddenly occurred to me while driving home in commuter traffic that it wasn’t arbitrary at all. In fact, it made a lot of sense. There’s a type of Christian belief called snake (or serpent) handling that’s found in Appalachia and other areas of the rural Southeast where they use rattlesnakes in (a small part of) their religious service. According to this Wikipedia page on the practice, one of the more famous practitioners of this belief, pastor George Went Halsey, preached that those believers who were truly filled with the Holy Spirit could handle venomous serpents, as well as drink poison, without harm. I had first heard about this years ago but I had forgotten it. The images I’ve seen are sermons conducted in a tent, like a revival, although they’re done in regular churches as well, and there’s a pastor holding a large rattlesnake bare-handed before the assembled congregation. When I remembered this, the film's scene made a lot more sense to me. Not only why the pastor had a rattlesnake in his office, but Violet’s nonchalant, bare-handed abduction of the snake. However, I take issue with no set-up for this in the film itself. Not knowing this type of religious practice makes the whole scene awfully arbitrary to me, which is really unfortunate, because I think it really adds to the movie contextually otherwise. So, I think Bates dropped the ball here, or at the very least, misjudged the necessity of needing to include some kind of explanation. And I don’t think a lot of exposition regarding this would have been necessary. For instance, at more than one time we see religious programming on TV. If there was a scene of a sermon with snake handling on the TV, that would have been enough. Second, how Violet actually uses the snake is a little far-fetched, I think. She puts it in the toilet that Isabel uses in an effort to kill "the whore." On paper it might make some sense, but on screen, well, they use a pretty sizable rattlesnake. I found it very hard to believe that someone going to the toilet would not see it before they sat down, no matter HOW quickly they lifted the seat and turned around and sat, even if distracted. But, letting that slide, I was distracted by the snake calmly sitting in the water waiting. I wouldn’t think it would stay there, that it would have left the toilet for a dry spot before Isabel even came in the room. But, I’ve also accepted some screwier plot developments in other films, so this could be me being crotchety. Still, the lack of an explanation for the rattlesnake in the first place is, I think, a big mistake.

Having said all that, one of the things I realized during our film chat that I really liked about the film, was that both Owen and Isabel have a strong religious element in their families. Owen directly mentions how it turned him against the church, but Isabel’s feelings are left for us to debate via her brother’s strong fundamentalist views. To further reinforce this idea, Violet is also a hardline fundamentalist and it colors how she talks to Isabel especially, unapologetically calling her a “whore” to her face. But, it occurred to me that perhaps there’s an unconscious parallel here to the behavioral dynamics of Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs). In the same way that ACOAs either grow up to be alcoholics or are drawn to other alcoholics perhaps without even realizing it (this is speaking very broadly), due to the strong behavioral influence of their upbringing, I see similar behavioral dysfunction between Owen and Isabel, and perhaps Isabel being attracted to Owen because she instinctually recognizes his behavioral dynamic from such a family upbringing. In this case, they would be, well, Adult Children of Religious Fanatics. This idea I found fascinating and I think deepens any meditation on the film. True, I may be totally reading into this on my part, but I don't think that makes the observation less valid in these days of our multiple dysfunctional society and 12-step programs. Again, I wasn’t thinking about this dynamic during my first watching of the film, but it occurred to me a couple days later when we discussed the film.

Finally, I found elements of tragedy in the plot, where characters sow the seeds of their own destruction and I thought that added another layer of understanding and discussion to the film as well. Another SPOILER ALERT: Specifically, Owen and Isabel’s behavior. Considering that Isabel was the one that pushed for Owen’s reconciliation visit with Violet and Pearl, when Violet’s verbal abuse becomes too much for Isabel, Isabel’s had enough and wants to leave. Even when Pearl later steals into Isabel's room late at night to try and convince her to stay, Pearl even saying she might come to some sort of closure with Owen if he and Isabel would stay a little longer, Isabel won’t even consider it and tells Pearl no. In this way I think Isabel is selfish. Also, when Owen finally talks with Pearl in her room, he asks her to forgive him for abandoning her, which is understandable. And Pearl says she can't. Which is also understandable. I think Owen's impatience with Pearl is tragic, although part of that is not only is his inexperience at working through these emotional negotiations with family (sometimes a long process), but also he's pressured by a deadline since Isabel wants to leave the house as soon as possible. And though Owen tells Pearl he needs her forgiveness, he doesn't actually articulate he's sorry to Pearl for what he did to her.

So the ending took me rather by surprise, but upon re-watching it and after further reflection (especially watching the emotional shifts in one of the character's faces, seeing first the release of years of suppressed tension and then, having crossed that bridge, the realization of perhaps new beginnings) it wraps up some emotional loose ends nicely. I also liked how Bates uses slow motion to drag out the conclusion, both in letting us wait to see what actually happened but also allowing us to consider what's going on in the sudden conclusion. In fact, watching the ending for the third time made me like the film more.
Who knew!

Alright, I suppose I should wrap things up finally.

One of the reasons I hadn’t finished my review (the first work-in-progress version) was because I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I kept going back and forth as I debated how much I liked and disliked this movie.  When I first watched TRASH FIRE, my reaction was mostly negative, starting with Owen's character. But, he did change and I actually found the film and the cast of characters interesting. But I still had some problems with parts of the narrative.
And then I outright lost that first version of the review because of a computer virus scare and when I impulsively shut off my computer, apparently I didn't save what I was writing so far, so, after much swearing, I had to start the review again.
Still, after it's all said and done, and after much thought and some re-watching, I think my feelings towards TRASH FIRE are closer to Mermaid Heather's positive review, except instead of her diplomatic disclaimers, my criticisms are crankier. So, I think TRASH FIRE's definitely worth a watch, but depending on what aspects of the film you wind up focusing on, there's no guarantee what you'll take away from it. But, now I'm definitely interested in checking out Bates' other film, EXCISION (2012) which also stars AnnaLynne McCord. And I may even watch TRASH FIRE one more time...
Man, in a way, trying to write a review for this film was a little like therapy for me, at least in terms of working through things.

Whatever: Yay, I'm done!

Also, now that I've finally posted my review of TRASH FIRE, you can also check out what Mermaid Heather and Zombie Dawn thought about the film, too; also, here's our discussion about the film. Okay, onto reviewing the second film (for May) I'm behind on, and then, after editing and posting the chat for May's film, well, then, finally, I'll be set to watch and review this month's film!
...baby steps, baby steps...

We Like to Watch/The Netflix Connection (#1): THE SILENCED (2015)

January 21, 2018

Holy crap! It’s 2018!
Happy New Year, dear faithful blog-readers*!

Last year I started and/or worked on several posts for this blog. Uh... sixteen, to be exact. Jeez.
JEEZ!
Okay, to be honest, some of these drafts were only titles of films with an intention to "bang out” some sort of review (or at least puke out some feedback on) later and it just never came to be. Some were actually a few paragraphs long and I just wasn’t able to finish the deal. So, yeah: sixteen. Pretty impressive number, huh? Wait, hang on... For actual published posts in 2017, I had...

...ONE.

Oh, man. Lame.
Alright, alright... in my meager defense, 2017 was an INCREDIBLY stressful year for me. My wife and I moved for the first time in 18 years out of our first home as a married couple (yes, we lived in joyful sin in a couple apartments first). We thought that first home was going to be our ‘starter home” but... EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER. So, now we’ve moved into our retirement home, dammit! And yes, moving is stressful on its own, but the real stress was we were doing a lot of remodeling and... by philosophical choice, I’m not a home improvement person. At all. As to why, I’ll only explain simply by saying that when I helped my dad out doing home repairs around the house as a child and eventually as an adult, it was like watching Frick and Frack at work. Our “efforts” at fixing things around the house left much to be desired aesthetically, and as a result I eventually became a perfectionist AND also felt I’d never achieve those standards, so I avoided home repairs completely.
And then 2017 totally bit me in the ass. Our “new” house - which we inherited from my dad when he passed away in 2016, and was actually my home when I was nine until sometime after college and then I finally moved out - needed a lot of work. We hired various contractors to do the main work, but I did most of the painting inside. There were some other smaller tasks, too. So, anyway, I was distracted in 2017, big time.

“Okay,” interrupts the faithful blog reader, “that explains your laughable output in 2017. But, in 2016 you only posted five times. And in 2015, why, no posts at all! What was keeping you from writing those years..?”

Those are valid points and that is an excellent question.
Um...

Okay, enough about me!
What about this damn movie, THE SILENCED?

In an effort to post substantially more this year, I’ve enlisted my good pal, Mermaid Heather.
Heather has been chugging along spectacularly (or, should I say, swimmingly - ha!) with her own unabashedly self-titled horror-movie review blog, Mermaid Heather, for over a decade. This will be her 12th year reviewing! Plus, she also is the main contributor at Top Horror Movies Club. She is a movie-watching AND reviewing machine!
Anyway, several times she reviews films I’ve never even heard of before. Okay, that ain’t saying much. I rarely see movies in the theater or watch commercial television, so I don’t see a lot of trailers for new films. So, most new titles I’d see were on the shelf at our former Family Video, which I’d go to infrequently. Also, Heather had Netflix and I didn’t.
Until we moved.
In a game-changing technological advance in our humble household similar to the year when we got a new computer that could finally handle the Youtube channel (that was HUGE), we now have a TV that allows us to watch Netflix and indulge in the modern magic of streaming movies and TV shows. For instance, I finally saw the first season of STRANGER THINGS, a show I’ve only read about in other people’s Facebook posts! Also, in an equally earth-shattering development, I now have a new set of headphones so I can finally watch movies properly with sound. See, my wife usually goes to bed before me and in our old house our TV was downstairs below the bedroom. So, when I watched TV, I didn’t want to disturb her, so I’d mute the TV and watch with the subtitles on. Not quite the same as watching with the sound on.
But now, now I’m catching up with social media, current popular culture and my own impulsive cinemaphilia. Comparatively speaking, at least.

But getting back to Heather’s numerous reviews of things she’s seen on Netflix:
So, I asked her if she’d be interested in having a very small “movie club”- me and her, specifically - and check out horror movies on Netflix together. My motivation was two-fold: to increase my blogging output and review more films, but more importantly, to be able to discuss a film more thoroughly with someone else who had seen the film.
And Heather, forever patient and forgiving**, said yes.
The format: we each post our own review of the selected film at our own blog on the same date (with a link to the other’s review, natch!). We follow it up with a discussion of the film (NOTE: SPOILERS!).
For our maiden effort I invited Heather to make the first choice, and then we’d alternate picking films from there.
She picked THE SILENCED.


THE SILENCED (2015, South Korean; Written and directed by Hae-yeong Lee; Cast: Bo-young Park (Joo-ran/Shizuko), So-dam Park (Yeon-duk/Kazue), Ji-won Uhm (Headmistress), Ye-ji Kong (Yuka), Seong-yeon Park (Counselor), Bo-Bi Joo (Kihara), Se-in Park (Eguchi), Won-Hee Go (Shizuko))

NOTE: What in tarnation! 848 words later he finally gets around to his freaking review..! (I know, it’s either feast or famine...)***

The film begins with an aerial shot of a car driving along a winding road through a forested landscape. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980). In the car there is a teenage girl sitting alone in the back seat. In front a well-dressed woman sits and the driver is a chauffeur. Right from the start, there’s tension.  The girl, also well-dressed in red, looks apprehensive. The woman’s expression seems cold and distant.
The car pulls up to a closed gate and it is let in. It opens up into a clearing and we see the grounds and a large building, where a title informs us, “Sanitorium School Near Seoul, 1938.” In the headmistress’s office, we learn that the girl, Shizuko, is being left there while the woman goes on to Tokyo, whose husband is already there. The headmistress, Kato Sanae (played by Ji-won Uhm), who seems very kind, sits across from Shizuko and tells her that “she’s on her own now. But, so is everyone else here.” The headmistress also assures her that she’ll be healthy again soon. We see Shizuko clutch a white handkerchief in her hands.
As soon as Shizuko’s mother leaves the school, it seems the young student is in for misery. All her personal things are removed and her outfit is replaced by a uniform. When she tries to at least keep her diary, the Counselor admonishes her to behave and suddenly slaps her, informing her strictly that she must follow “regulation.”
We also learn that another student was previously at the school and then abruptly left. Coincidentally, her name was Shizuko as well. Due to circumstance, our protagonist - the second Shizuko (Bo-young Park) - is now taking her place, not only numerically but physically as well, such as using her old bed. This perceived act of replacement along with the similar name seems to be stirring up conflicting emotions with two students, Kazue and Yuka, who knew the departed girl. Yuka’s interactions with Shizuko are immediately confrontational, even bullying as she throws little stones at Shizuko in the middle of the night as she more or less interrogates her in front of the other students. Kazue, meanwhile, turns out to be more supportive and helpful by comparison, something you would hope for from another student when you're brand new to a place. Although, this also causes tension and confusion in Yuka who feels that Kazue is betraying the first Shizuko’s memory. Another student, Kihara, seems to be friendly towards Shizuko, although unlike Kazue, is a bit more awkward and eccentric in personality.
While all this drama is going, Shizuko is also constantly dealing with her sickness. When she has a coughing spell in front of the students, she coughs up blood, and Yuka wonders aloud if it’s TB, with the other girls immediately trying to distance themselves from Shizuko.
The headmistress soon learns that Shizuko has coughed up blood, and prescribes a regular IV for her in hopes of making her better. But even the first IV process looks painful with the needle going into her arm and the poor girl lying there in bed for the treatment. My heart totally went out to Shizuko for her situation and the sensitive way actress Bo-young Park portrays her.
Finally, there’s a mystery going on at the school, foremost is why did the first Shizuko leave so suddenly and without explanation? But then another student suddenly leaves in the middle of the night. And Kihara, the awkward student, suddenly acts erratically, even violently, with no apparent reason. And our troubled Shizuko seems to be the lightening rod for all these developments. Was the first Shizuko’s departure actually the tip to a more ominous iceberg? And are there other secrets, perhaps of a more sinister nature, going on at the school? It’s this persistent mystery of the story that distinguishes it from becoming simply a teen drama and pushes THE SILENCED quietly into genre territory.
But which genre?

Right off the bat, let me say I really enjoyed this film. I think Hae-yeong Lee did a wonderful job with both the writing and the direction, and he was ably assisted by the performances of the cast, especially Bo-young Park as Shizuko, So-dam Park as Kazue and Ji-won Uhm as the headmistress. At the beginning of the film, Shizuko's behavior is extremely tentative, she’s barely audible when she speaks due to shyness, and her movements are tentative because of her illness. Her misery is palpable.
Also, the way Lee introduces the mystery elements are very carefully done. Shizuko is startled in the middle of the night by the appearance of a student under a bed who then scurries away in the dark. Did Shizuko dream it? When she sees a bloody student under the staircase and then she tries to tell someone to no avail, is Shizuko hallucinating? Or are these bizarre moments red herrings? Meanwhile, Shizuko and Kazue’s interaction together deepens into a friendship, but also yields more fragmented answers and questions about the first Shizuko and her unsatisfactorily explained departure. Altogether, I thought it was good storytelling assisted with good performances.
Besides the excellent work of the leads I also wanty to mention the multi-faceted, sympathetic portrayal by actress Bo-bi Joo as somewhat goofy, friendly Kihara, who also has two separate scenes where she’s required to be very specifically physical with her own body and in a disturbing, believable way.

As a horror film, this really isn’t. It’s more of a dark mystery. Maybe even a historical mystery, but not so much like a period film, but more in that as the story plays out there’s a reason it’s set in the late 30s. But the film’s main selling point for me was the interaction between the cast, particularly the growing friendship between Shizuko and Kazue.
And for me, another element of interest was historical. At one point, Kazue takes Shizuko to a “secret basement” no longer in use “where everything is broken” and she asks Shizuko what her given name was. It’s Joo-ran. Kazue’s says her name was Yeon-duk. Huh? Yeah, that whole exchange confused me. ****
At the end of the movie, I realized that the film pointedly takes place prior to World War II, and more importantly, involves Japan. Other than what basic things I knew about U.S. and Japanese involvment during the war, beyond that scope my actual world historical knowledge is limited or nil. I knew previously that Japan had invaded China (at some point), but I knew nothing about Japan and Korea. Hell, I know little specifically about Korea (either North or South) as it is today. So, I wondered (incorrectly) if the school had assigned Japanese names to these Korean students. But after watching the movie, I did a little internet research and according to the “Korea under Japanese rule” Wikipedia page, the Japanese Empire annexed Korea in 1910. Imperial Japanese rule of the country ended when the Japanese surrendered in 1945, with the country breaking into North and South Korea, self-ruled but under different systems: the North supported by the Soviet union, the South supported by the U.S. But, I digress.
During the years of Korea’s Japanese rule, at one point Japan formally decided to assimilate the Koreans into Japan and the Koreans adopted Japanese names. Actually, this formally happened in 1939, a year after the film takes place. Prior to that, historically, Japan followed a completely different policy, where they didn’t want Koreans changing their names. So, if that’s true, the movie is fudging that timeline.
But, whatever, it helped me understand this whole double-name thing better. Some kind of understanding of this Japanese-Korean history also deepens and ultimately informs the film’s story, too.

I’m making a point of not saying too much about the plot because I think it’s more enjoyable to see how the story develops without knowing too much ahead of time. I think the strange triangle of friendship and distrust involving Shizuko/Joo-ran, Kazue/Yeon-duk and Yuka was well-executed. One of the things I liked about this story was the use of genre/fantasy to comment on social realities. When Shizuko/Joo-ran and Kazue/Yeon-duk reveal their given names, they make a point of using those names amongst each other. When the counselor talks about the importance of “regulations,” are both of these elements deliberate comments about Imperialist Japan’s influence on society, especially Korean society?
When the drugs seem to be working on Joo-ran’s health, actress Bo-young Park does a nice job showing Joo-ran’s growing confidence in herself, physically and emotionally. When the film starts to approach the more fantastic repercussions of the story, like Joo-ran’s spectacular standing up to another one of Yuka’s bullying outbursts, writer/director Lee deftly utilizes this plot development to also expand on the relationship and tragic secrets of Yeon-duk and the first Shizuko. And that also works in a thread about personal self-repression which seems appropriate at a setting with maturing adolescents learning to handle difficult and strong emotions.
There’s also a nice bit where we see how the Counselor learned how to be so strict.
I wonder if the headmistress’s ultimate motivations in how she ran the sanitorium are based on some cultural background of the time, too, in terms of a woman’s place in either Korean or Japanese society. I’m not sure. I’ll have to do some more Wikipedia-ing and Googling.

To be honest, I think the ending may be just a bit too much believability-wise for some viewers, but I liked it. But we do go more into speculative fiction in the last half hour. Still, as we learn about what’s going on at the school, part of me wondered about/predicted some of the climactic developments, and they were more or less fulfilled to some degree, at least in spirit, so it didn’t bother me too much.
Having said that, there is a lot that does happen in the end. The film moves steadily along showing us more information, going from point A then to B then to C, etc., but at the end when things accelerate in intensity, there are some convenient storytelling devices to move things along from, like, uh, point M to Z. For example, a film projector that suddenly and conveniently turns on mostly to help with exposition in a scene, for instance.
But I still found the whole film satisfying, an enjoyable experience especially through the eyes of the characters Joo-ran and Yeon-duk. In that regard, I greatly appreciated the fact that the filmmakers found time to have a little epilogue in the secret basement.

As a footnote, after watching this film I’m reminded (very superficially mind you, but that won’t stop me from bringing it up) of another film I saw in the past year or so, that has some similarities: it’s set in a school (an American public high school), and a student has afflictions that seem beyond real. In fact, as the story progresses they seem to be of a spiritual/demonic nature. That 2014 film is HIGH SCHOOL EXORCISM (aka HIGH SCHOOL POSSESSION). In that film’s case, the filmmakers made a broader effort at embracing their genre elements and it was a bit misleading, arguably, unless you were speaking metaphorically (am I being vague enough for you, dear annoyed reader?). Although, the ending in that film gets more extreme in behavior towards the end, too. Still, from what I remember (and comparing apples and pears really), THE SILENCED's various elements were handled much better.

Finally, watching this film was a bit of a cultural eye-opener, which I welcomed. Sometimes, you watch foreign genre films and it seems the biggest difference is language. But occasionally, you see some other things that have to be explained. There are some cultural things that we take for granted in this country, because it’s our country and we’re more familiar with its history. So, for instance, the Civil War is part of that knowledge and regional cultural teaching, rightly or wrongly. There are some assumptions we make or are led to believe about the south and southern people, etc., even if it’s a stereotype, sometimes, but we know those stereotypes, because we’ve been taught them or we’ve seen them. So, that sort of similar knowledge that a Korean or Japanese audience has about their own country is lost on us. But, I think it’s cool when a film allows us a bit of a foot (maybe a toe is more acccurate) into one of the doors opening into a country’s history and culture and invites us to open it wider.

And here is the link for Mermaid Heather’s review of THE SILENCED.
Holy cow! I watched the movie AND reviewed it in time for the deadline! I’m gonna buy a lottery ticket!

POSTSCRIPT: Heather and I also did a follow-up conversation about the movie on Facebook messenger. One of the reasons I wanted to do this “film club” with Heather was to also talk about a film that we both have seen while we still remember it. Heather posted our discussion at her blog and you can read it here. NOTE: SPOILER ALERT!


* HAHAHAHA! I used a plural! I kill me!
** Heather has enlisted my help on reviews in the past with mixed results from me. My spirit was enthusiastically willing, but my flesh was weakly inconsistent in the execution. I’ll leave it at that.
*** (No, it’s “someone needs an editor...”)
**** Further confusion. In the film, the subtitles had the spelling of Joo-ran’s name as “Ju-ran” but on IMDb, it’s "Joo-ran.” There’s a number of different spellings, including for some actresses and also the writer/director’s name. I think I tried to keep it consistent to the IMDb spellings, but there’s no guarantee. I’m not used to these Korean names, so I was mostly trying to spell them correctly on top of keeping them straight. That was the intent, at least...