There
is no gifted & talented program sufficient for Koo Ja-yoon’s remarkable
abilities. She can sing, dance, and get top grades without studying. She is
also an adopted orphan, so you know what that means. Unfortunately, Young’s
creators are out to bring her back into their shadowy fold in screenwriter-director
Park Hoon-jung’s The Witch: Subversion (originally,
there was a “Part 1” in there), which releases today on DVD.
Koo
came along at a fortuitous time for an older couple still mourning their son
and grandson. Technically, she escaped from the Skinner-Box-ish lab, where she
was conditioned and enhanced. It was some sort of government-corporate
co-venture that was forced to liquidate when the bosses got wind of how
dangerous she is. If there was any question on that score, her relentlessly
violent escape should put all doubts to rest.
For
years, Ja-yoon grows up happily with the Koos, with all her traumatic memories
apparently buried by her subconscious. Unfortunately, her mini-seizures are
gaining in intensity, but the real trouble comes when she successfully
auditions for an Idol-style talent
contest, where naturally she becomes an overnight favorite. She also attracts
the attention of the re-constituted cabal.
Honestly,
at this point, the murky conspiracy stuff is dull and derivative. We’ve seen it
all before, and it is usually easier to distinguish the faceless
co-conspirators and their competing factions. Likewise, there is a long stretch
between Koo’s initial escape and the inevitable fateful confrontation that
drags interminably. Still, Park springs a few third act revelations on viewers
that are clever and really pretty shocking.
Newcomer
Kim Da-mi is also quite impressive as Koo. She can go from a shy,
self-conscious teenager to the younger analog of Kim Ok-bin in The Villainess, in about ten seconds
flat. Choi Woo-sik (from Parasite)
and Da-Eun also display some nifty action chops as the “witches” pursuing her.
Plus, Jo Min-soo chews all the scenery in her vicinity with haughty, elitist
relish as the evil lead scientist.
Park
really should have tightened up the mid-section and trimmed at least twenty
minutes out of the unnecessarily long 125-minute running time. Nevertheless,
when the violent action kicks in, it is quite a spectacle to behold.
Recommended for the last half hour, which is really all you need to watch
(genre fans can easily fill in the blanks), The
Witch: Subversion releases today (3/10) on DVD, from Well Go USA.
