Today’s episode, voted by our patrons is I Saw the Devil, the Korean revenge thriller/horror film.
Synopsis
I saw the Devil is a 2010 Korean thriller about Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun), a grieving husband seeking revenge against his wife’s killer (Choi Min-sik). Unlike most revenge films, this one is not about him finding the killer to bring them to justice, it’s about tormenting and psychologically breaking a monstrous serial killer. It helps that the husband is basically Korean James Bond and has accrued plenty of PTO.
Review of I Saw the Devil
This is legit one of the best thrillers I have ever seen. It’s well written, and it doesn’t waste a minute of it’s 2:24 runtime. It makes me miss the serial killer thrillers of the late nineties and 2000s. As with any thriller, people may argue whether or not it is a horror movie. I ignore these people, because they have too much time on their hands. and this is on letterboxes top 250 horror movies, so that’s something. I will say if you are looking for disturbing and gory imagery, this film has it.
I Saw the devil doesn’t shy away from giving us the killer Jang Kyung-chul’s perspective, which can be disturbingly voyeuristic and horrifying in its simplicity. The brutal confrontation scenes with the protagonist being a proto John Wick balances out the film with a sense of catharsis and perverse satisfaction of the killer getting his comeuppance. However, they come at a price. The film asks the viewer “can a man use evil against evil and come out unscathed?” .
This is one of those movies that’s so perfect in its concept and construction that it makes me wonder how it hasn’t been done before. It’s deceptively simple, but is actually an impressive balancing act of being disturbing, thrilling, funny, and ultimately satisfying.
Score
10/10