So this maid totally blackmails this man into sleeping with her, kills one of his children, and then incarcerates him and his wife in their own house, right? The moral of the story: apparently, the wife should have never wanted to own her own house, and all men when they grow older are pigs. YUP. Beautiful.
Ki-young Kim's modern parable starts in with the social commentary right from the get-go, but after a while devolves into a nonsense horror movie where a completely insane woman holds an entire family hostage with their guilt and fear. None of the family members at any point have the guts to stand up for themselves, so for almost about two hours you get to see a murderer, narcissist, and blackmailer hold sway over weak people with no cajones with poison and threats of the police, while she kills off the family one-by-one.
Not to say that the family is completely devoid of their own responsibility, but half the problem is that they won't just chop off her head with a shovel like the snake that she is. There's only so far I buy the "Oh noes, we'll lose our jobs and people won't respect us" after the body count begins. The main problem is that it's incredibly hard to have sympathy for these people. Pretty much nobody acts in any way to improve their situation, and all of them become subject to this woman's desires for happiness that are just impossibly met. It sucks worse because the movie takes place over a relatively long period of time, and you'd think these people'd think it through a bit. But instead it's all moping and shrinking while the maid just goes gradually insane.
Not a very enjoyable movie. Shameless moralizing that is not backed up by the motivations OF the characters. Way too little common sense IN the characters. What interest you can get out of the film-making and the cinematography will be forgotten quickly in the painfulness of the plot. Best just to steer clear.
--PolarisDiB
Ki-young Kim's modern parable starts in with the social commentary right from the get-go, but after a while devolves into a nonsense horror movie where a completely insane woman holds an entire family hostage with their guilt and fear. None of the family members at any point have the guts to stand up for themselves, so for almost about two hours you get to see a murderer, narcissist, and blackmailer hold sway over weak people with no cajones with poison and threats of the police, while she kills off the family one-by-one.
Not to say that the family is completely devoid of their own responsibility, but half the problem is that they won't just chop off her head with a shovel like the snake that she is. There's only so far I buy the "Oh noes, we'll lose our jobs and people won't respect us" after the body count begins. The main problem is that it's incredibly hard to have sympathy for these people. Pretty much nobody acts in any way to improve their situation, and all of them become subject to this woman's desires for happiness that are just impossibly met. It sucks worse because the movie takes place over a relatively long period of time, and you'd think these people'd think it through a bit. But instead it's all moping and shrinking while the maid just goes gradually insane.
Not a very enjoyable movie. Shameless moralizing that is not backed up by the motivations OF the characters. Way too little common sense IN the characters. What interest you can get out of the film-making and the cinematography will be forgotten quickly in the painfulness of the plot. Best just to steer clear.
--PolarisDiB