Kang
Mi-hee was Catholic, but she could still recognize bad feng shui when she was living
right smack dab in the middle of it. We are talking some seriously bad energy
here. The resulting horrors will reverberate for decades in Lim Dae-woong’s House of the Disappeared (trailer here), which screens during
the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Kang
was convicted for the murders of her second husband Chul-joong and her
firstborn son, Hyo-je, but the latter’ body was never found. After twenty-five
years in prison, Kang’s sentence has been commuted to house arrest on
compassionate grounds. She has throat cancer. However, it is not particularly
compassionate to imprison her in the same evil house where it all went down.
Yet, she wants to be there, because she is convinced Hyo-je is still there
somehow. Although she never asked for his help, Priest Choi keeps offering.
Eventually, he will uncover the house’s creepy history, involving a regular
cycle of disappearances.
If
Disappeared sounds familiar, it is
because it is a Korean remake of the Venezuelan film, The House at the End of Time. Frankly, screenwriter Jang Jae-hyeon
follows Alejandro Hidalgo’s film beat-for-beat, but there is no getting around
the fact Korean cinema is just so better suited to handling the uncanny
sentimental heart-string tugging of denouement. It is what they do best.
Yunjin
Kim, best known for her breakout American television work on Lost and Mistresses, happens to be very adept at yanking on those
heart-strings. She is terrific as Kang, convincingly portraying her as a young
mother and disgraced old woman. Former boy-bander TaecYeon also vastly exceeds
expectations as Father Choi. Young Park Sang-hoon IV and Ko Woo-rim are both so
strong as Hyo-je and his brother Ji-won, they often make it painful to watch
the film.
