Im Dae-woong

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) Southern Korean cinema doesn’t always play nicely (especially compared to other national film industries like China and India), and that’s especially true in horror, which regularly gives Japan a big run for its money. Another case in point, out of many: Bloody Reunion, a stylish but incredibly violent slasher film. The core of the film is a small-scale class reunion organized by a disabled teacher and her caretaker. Except that of the six students invited, all deeply despise the teacher, and that hatred doesn’t seem one-sided considering how a bunny-masked figure goes around murdering the ex-students… sometimes before they can harm the teacher. The plot is serviceable, with enough third-act twists to satisfy. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that the point of the film for director Im Dae-woong are the bloody, gory death sequences that keep on going steadily throughout the film’s 93 minutes and even once the framing device concludes. The better-than-usual story helps make this slightly more than an easily dismissed slasher, but there’s also some material here that alludes to the South Korean educational system and how it can leave scars that carry on for decades. I don’t particularly like the result, but then again, I’m not a fan of gory horror. In the subgenre, however, there’s much worse out there, and despite Bloody Reunion’s almost-comical degree of violence, it’s not badly made at all.