Yoo Ah-in | Through the Shattered Lens

I’ll be the fist to admit that it’s probably open for debate whether or not the 2018 South Korean film, Burning, is really a horror film. On the one hand, it could be a murder mystery or perhaps a film about a poor farm boy who meets an upper class sociopath. On the other hand, it could all be a big misunderstanding. By the end of the movie, you’re not even sure that all of these characters even existed. Though there are no ghosts nor any other paranormal monsters to be found in Burning, it’s still a deeply unsettling film. In fact, it’s one of the most unsettling films that I’ve seen in a while. It’s a film that sticks with you, as any good horror film should.

Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) is an aspiring writer who makes a meager living by doing odd jobs in Seoul. His family owns a farm and his father has been accused of murder, though the details as to what happened are left deliberately opaque. When Jong-su runs into an old classmate named Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo) in downtown Seoul, he doesn’t recognize her at first. She cheerfully explains that she’s had plastic surgery. She also says that she has spent years training in the art of pantomime. She pantomimes eating invisible food and she does such a good job at it that you’d swear she was actually holding something in her hand and chewing something in her mouth. After they have sex, Hae-mi says that she’s going on a trip to Africa and she asks Jong-su to look after her cat. Jong-su agrees.

And yet, we never see the cat. After Hae-mi leaves, Lee goes to her apartment and searches for the cat but never finds it. He finds evidence that the cat does exist. Food is eaten. The litter box is used. And yet, the entire time that Jong-su is supposed to be taking care of it, the cat is never seen. Jong-su spends so much time searching for the cat in that apartment that it’s hard not to wonder if the cat even existed. For that matter, Hae-mi’s story about going to Africa is remarkably vague. Why is she going to Africa? Why has she entrusted someone she barely knows with taking care of her cat? Are the cat and the visit to Africa just another pantomime, something that seems real yet only exists in Jong-su’s mind?

When Hae-mi finally does return from her trip, she brings with her a story about being stranded in the Nairobi Airport for three days as the result of a terrorist attack. Returning with Hae-mi is Ben (Steven Yeun). Ben is a handsome and rich and confident and everything that Lee is not. Ben alternates between being superficially friendly and chillingly cold. At one point, he suggests that he at least cared enough about Hae-mi to be jealous of her relationship with Jong-su and yet it’s hard not to notice that Ben always seems to be slightly annoyed with her whenever they’re together. When the three of them go up to Jong-su’s farm and a stoned Hae-mi dances in the night, Jong-su watches enraptured while Ben smirks. (It would be easy to assume that Jong-su is the good guy while Ben is the bad guy if not for a scene where Jong-soo angrily reprimands Hae-mi for her behavior around other men, showing that Ben is not only person in the film with control issues.) At one point, Ben casually tells Jung-so about his interesting habit. He sets fire to greenhouses. He destroys the beauty that others have grown. He tells Jong-su that he’s noticed a lot of greenhouses near his family’s farm….

Burning is a deeply unsettling film. It’s not just that Steven Yeun gives a chilling performance as a man who appears to have no soul. (The film makes very good use of Yeun’s natural likability so show how someone like Ben can not only survive in the world but also thrive in it.) At the same time that we’re trying to figure out Ben, we’re also struggling to get a read on Jong-su as well. We spend a lot of time with Jong-su and yet, by the end of the movie, we’re still not sure that we know him at all. He says he wants to be a writer and speaks vaguely of Faulkner and Fitzgerald but it still seems as if he’s hiding secrets of his own. It’s tempting to read a lot (perhaps too much) into Jong-su’s admiration of Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Faulkner wrote novels that took place in the heads of his characters, much as how Burning, at times, seems to be taking place completely in the head of Jong-su. Fitzgerald’s best-known novel was about a man who was obsessed with money and a woman whom he had idealized beyond reality. Jong-su, at one point, refers to Ben as being Gatsby but we’re left to wonder if perhaps it’s the other way around. Perhaps Jong-su is Gatsby, the poor man who is constantly trying to reinvent his reality.

It all leads to a mystery that may not be a mystery and clues that could just as easily by coincidences. It also leads to an act of sudden violence, one that leaves you wondering whether or not we knew any of these people. As I said, it’s a deeply unsettling film but, at the same time, it’s not one that can be ignored. It has a 148-minute running time and it’s deliberately paced and yet, due to the strength of the performers and the intriguing enigma of the plot, you don’t get bored. You don’t look away. You watch this story and you search for answers that you know you’ll probably never find.

Burning is on Netflix right now so be sure to watch it before they drop it to make room for another season of American Horror Story.

My feelings on the zombie genre are so mixed.

On the one hand, zombies are scary and zombie movies, when done well, can be genuinely disturbing. Zombie movies deal with the inevitably of death. Whenever someone dies, we always say that they’re at peace. “At least, they’re not suffering anymore,” we say. Zombie movies suggest that there is no peace after death. Instead, the suffering of life is just replaced with nonstop hunger and savagery of death. Meanwhile, the living don’t even get a chance to mourn their dead before they’re forced to kill them again. Zombies are relentless and they used to be our friends and family. That’s one reason why zombies haunt us in a way that certain other monsters never will.

At the same time, when it comes to zombie movies, there’s just so many of them! Seriously, it seems like there must be at least a hundred zombie movies released every year. We’ve seen so many scenes of the dead running through empty city streets that it’s hard not to get cynical. The first time you see a reanimated corpse eat its parents, it’s disturbing. But, by the hundredth time you’ve seen it, it’s just expected. We now live in an age where every disaster is compared to a “zombie apocalypse.” Even non-horror fans know about zombies. The days of zombies being obscure are over. They’re now firmly a part of pop culture and, as a result, they’ve become a bit annoying.

I say all this because, in many ways, #Alive is a standard zombie film. This South Korean film opens with Joon-woo
(Yoo Ah-in) in his apartment, playing video games. When reports come in of something strange happening in the streets of Seoul, Joon-woo goes out to his balcony to see what’s happening. What he sees is a world gone mad, one in which hordes of growling people run through the streets, biting down and feeding on anyone who gets to close to them. Yes, the zombie apocalypse has begun and Seoul is apparently right in the middle of it.

And don’t get me wrong. The zombies are indeed frightening and there’s an exciting sequence where Joon-woo has to force one out of his apartment. It’s all very well-directed and well-acted by Yoo Ah-in but it’s not anything that we haven’t seen before. At this point, audiences have seen so many zombie rampages that if a real one ever breaks out, the uninfected will probably start bitching about how different it is from what the movies led them to expect.

What sets #Alive apart is the way it captures the feeling of being totally isolated and alone. Trapped in his apartment with only a limited amount of food and with no way of knowing whether or not his family is still alive, Joon-woo tries to maintain his sanity. Joon-woo is isolated from the outside world. He’s quarantied himself. Occasionally, he steps out on the balcony and sees if the zombies are still outside. (They are.) Occasionally, he checks the news to see if there’s an end in sight. (There’s not.) As the days pass, Joon-woo finds himself tempted to surrender to his despair.

But what if Joon-woo isn’t the only person left alive in his apartment complex? What if, on the other side of the complex, there’s a woman named Kim Yoo-bin (Park Shin-hye) who is trying to catch Joon-woo’s attention so that he’ll know that he’s not alone and that she’s willing to help? And just how much of a risk is Joon-woo willing to take to end his isolation?

That’s a question that feels especially relevant today, at a time when so many people are isolated, either voluntarily or by doctor’s orders. When a newscaster describes the zombies as being infected, it’s impossible not to think about what’s currently going on in the world. When Joon-woo discovers how truly difficult it is to be alone and unable to leave your home …. well, that’s the way many people have felt this entire year. Though #Alive was filmed before the pandemic lock-downs, it feels like a movie about our current times. As such, it has a power to it that it might not have had if it had been released at a different time. Like everyone, Joon-woo struggles with fear and despair. But, at the same time, he never allows himself to forget that he’s not dead yet. He’s still alive and there’s still hope.

#Alive is a film about how difficult it can be to live while everyone around you is obsessing on death but it’s also a film that encourages its viewers to embrace life, no matter how difficult or frightening the situation. It’s a film about the dead that ultimately has a lot to say about what it means to be alive.