Seung-wook Byeon

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2021) There’s a cat in a South Korean horror film called The Cat and people soon die. Do I really have to add anything more? As a felinophile, I was guaranteed to watch this film as soon as it popped up on my DVR, but I have to say that there isn’t much here to highlight. Another rather dull ghostly possession story that uses cute felines as a hook, The Cat doesn’t impress much: Feeling overlong at 105 minutes, it strings along the usual number of foreboding musical stings, jump scares, spooky-dark-haired-girl apparitions and steady deaths to play very much like just about every Asian horror film of that time. Cat fans won’t be overly happy in the way the animals are portrayed as evil or dangerous — and it’s to be noted that the most disturbing sequence of the film isn’t as much the spooky ghostly stuff as much as a very realistic euthanasia sequence set in a veterinary clinic. In other words, there isn’t much to recommend here. Sure, it is a South Korean film with cats — that’s already more distinctive than an umpteenth variation on monster-movie horror. But even with those distinctions, The Cat fails to impress much. Do your kitty a favour, and let them sit on your lap for another movie.