Disaster movies have always found favour in Korean cinema but recently, there has been heightened interest in the genre, with several tentpole productions with big name stars going on the floors and releasing in quick succession. Director Kim Ji-hoon himself is no stranger to the genre either, with his previously released film “The Tower” being in the same vein and “Sector 7” also going strong on the mayhem, thanks to its monster element. While his completed project “I Want to Know Your Parents” still languishes in release hell, his first film to be released in nine years since “The Tower” happens to be “Sinkhole”, also a disaster movie, albeit with a somewhat different treatment this time round.
“Sinkhole” is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
After 11 years of hard work, saving up and frugal living, Park Dong-won manages to buy an apartment for himself which he moves into with his wife and son. Moving Day has its hiccups, primarily in the form of loutish neighbour Jung Man-soo, who comes across rather uncouth but is actually a loving father to an aloof teenage son. Park soon hosts a housewarming party for his co-workers, including his subordinate Kim Seung-hyeon and new joinee Eun-joo. The next morning, as Dong-won and Eun-joo nurse a hangover and Seung-hyeon tries to leave for work, Man-soo enquires about the lack of running water in the entire building when a gigantic sinkhole forms under the apartment building and swallows the building whole, which falls 500 metres below ground. As the residents team up and try to survive underground, the rescue teams attempt to find the survivors of the disaster and attempt a rescue mission.
Since “Sinkhole” essentially deals with the topic of housing, Kim Ji-hoon takes the opportunity to include strong commentary on the real estate situation in modern Korea, and specifically in the city of Seoul. Urbanisation leading to homes being built upon clearly unstable, uninhabitable land is a real issue which finds itself interwoven in the narrative ironically to the point of the whole film being built strongly upon that foundation. The struggle of the Park family for more than a decade to finally buy a house of their own depicts a very real-life situation of homeowners, or at least of those trying to be one, in today's Seoul, as does Seung-hyeon's logical concerns of a bleak future for himself based solely on his inability to be able to buy his own home anytime soon. People are often depicted trying to hide any and all faults or bad incidents associated with their apartment buildings particularly in Korean films and this finds place in the narrative here as well.
Kim manages to get all these points across without losing focus of his primary goal, which is to entertain the audience. Thanks to a phenomenon rarely depicted in film, the plot remains relatively fresh and keeps the audiences intrigued with the various incidents that are associated with having your entire building sink underground, even if they may not be always unpredictable. While the CGI does let up on rare occasions, Shi Tae-ho's cinematography does just enough to keep the underground scenes feel fairly realistic, even if the claustrophobic feeling that one would associate with being 500 metres underground is often missing. Most importantly, Kim does all of this while keeping a fairly humorous tone throughout the feature, which is something one rarely gets to see with a disaster movie.
For this last bit, “Sinkhole” benefits from the presence of actors no strangers to the comedy genre. An unlikely leading man, Kim Sung-kyun's Dong-won has a “common man” vibe about him that makes him a relatable character, a husband just wanting the best for his wife and a father just wanting to be reunited with his young son. Lee Kwang-soo is first-rate and continues to strengthen his foothold in films with this, after his stellar comedy work on tv, and brings most of the feature's laughs. Cha Seung-won is clearly the star here, who brings to the centre a character that's clearly supposed to be a supporting one. The cracking of his tough veneer to expose a soft centre is expressed convincingly.
Kim Ji-hoon's “Sinkhole” is ultimately a humorous disaster movie with a heart that manages to tick many right boxes, bolstered by a cast that's out to have fun and who, in turn, ensure that the end result is a fun one for the audience.
