When Park Hoon-jung released a film about a young girl escaping an experimental facility with superpowers and taking revenge years later and ambitiously added a “Part 1” in the title, little did he or his fans know that there would be a time when his follow up to “The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion” would be stuck in limbo with a strong possibility of not coming to fruition at all. However, the ceasing of all activities by Warner Bros. in Korea, the production house that Park called home for a couple features, merely delayed the release of the second part, as the prolific director soon found new patronage at Next Entertainment World, who immediately greenlit the sequel, making it the first product of their collaboration with the director.
Escaping from one of the Facilities that Koo Ja-yoon has destroyed as she promised, a bruised and bloodied unnamed Girl runs into Kyeong-hee, who seems to be being kidnapped by some bad guys. When the Girl saves Kyeong-hee, the latter takes her to her home, which she shares with her younger brother Dae-gil. The home, as it turns out, is under threat from Kyeong-hee's uncle Yong-doo, who wants to take the property for himself and had even gone to the lengths of kidnapping and threatening her. While the Girl stays at the house and helps protect it from Yong-doo and his goons, warming up to both brother and sister, the Ark and Professor Baek (from Part 1) send super-soldier Jo-hyeon, who specialises in finding and neutralising such escaped super-children, to eliminate the Girl.
It would seem that Park Hoon-jung is a man who takes criticism fully on board. After facing heavy censure for the treatment of females in “V.I.P.”, he went ahead and made his very first film with a female lead with “The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion” straight after. The biggest negative comment that the naysayers of that feature had was that the action starts too late. This too is an aspect that Park changes almost from the word “go” in “The Other One” and the action here is simply magnificent and it gets progressively better, the set-pieces bigger and grander in scope, while keeping the story flowing freely forward and also giving us some flashback early on to further explain the extent of the experiments done by The Ark and the other Facilities. The way he manages to keep the full extent of the Girl's powers is also commendable so that when she finally uses them, they still retain the thrill and surprise factor that those of Ja-yoon had.
This does mean that the characters do suffer, and particularly that of the Girl, because whatever time “The Subversion” spent away from the action, it spent developing Ja-yoon into this fantastic, multi-layered character, a luxury that is not afforded to Girl, so much so that we do not even get to know her name. Although this may be by design on Park's part, since his commitment to the mythology of the world he built in the first part deserves praise, and answers are likely reserved for the eventual third part of the saga. In this regard, Park seems a lot more confident of getting a third go at this story than he was at a second chance, because he adds not just a climactic scene that hints at the direction the next part would take, which is frankly among the best scenes of the entire feature, but also an extended post-credits sequence. The time that the story remains away from the action here focuses more on the villains, particularly Jo-hyeon and her terribly cast Australian sidekick who are successfully used for the action sequences, further hampering the screen-time Girl gets.
This is probably Part 2's biggest drawback. The one question on many fans' minds ever since the news of a new character being central and her eventual casting has been if Shin Si-ah is the next Kim Da-mi, who went on to have a very successful career after “The Witch”, becoming one of the most exciting young actresses today. Once again chosen after auditioning a large number of actresses, there is no denying that Shin is a charismatic, talented actress. Even with limited screen-time and next-to-no dialogue, she manages to leave an impact and a beautiful lingering smile imprinted in your mind. However, she just isn't provided the scope that Kim Da-mi was privy to, leaving an unfair comparison between the two actresses. Her comedic scenes, thanks to her fascination with food, do manage to bring a chuckle and end up being where we see a warmer side to both the actress and her character. As opposed to the flat comedy between Jo-hyeon and her Australian second-in-charge, it is a lot more effectively used with Girl and Kyeong-hee, her brother as well as Yong-doo.
Both Park Eun-bin (returning to the big screen after 9 years) as Kyeong-hee and Seo Eun-soo as Jo-hyeon instead get a fair amount of work to do and impress in different manners. Where Park Eun-bin carries a lot of the drama, thanks to her plotlines involving Dae-gil and Yong-doo, Seo Eun-soo plays the badass Jo-hyeon to perfection, even if her scenes with her partner Tom fail due to corny dialogue and Justin John Harvey's acting, which may well have been purposely hammed up. Jin Goo has fun playing Yong-doo, while both Jo Min-soo, returning as Professor Baek, and Lee Jong-suk, returning to work with Park Hoon-jung after “V.I.P.” as The Ark overseer Jang, are relegated to cameo appearances, while the special appearance of a male star in a scene is a pleasant surprise.
In the technical departments as well, “The Other One” looks very much like a successor to the first one, with much of the technical teams returning for this production as well. After teaming with Lee Yeo earlier, Kim Young-ho acts as the sole cinematographer here, while Kim Jung-min also returns solo this time as the martial arts and action director, both combining to conjure up truly exciting sequences with the help of effective CGI. Some early scenes in flashback, the ransack of the Ark and the Girl's subsequent escape are memorable. The always reliable Mowg too returns with a score that feels a positive extension to that of the first feature.
In terms of its overall narrative, “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” may more or less follow the blueprint Park Hoon-jung drew for the first one and feature may sorely miss Koo Ja-yoon and Kim Da-mi, but there's still plenty of exciting sequences that make Park Hoon-jung's first sequel an enjoyable fare that fans should appreciate and if nothing else, one thing it does oh-so-well is build anticipation for the Part 3, which promises fireworks.
