Since a couple of years, it has stopped being unusual to have horror movies in the competition sections of A-list festivals. And although the time of highbrow classification of films according to their genre is luckily behind us, now it's the matter of finding the balance in quality of the ones and the others. Not counting some excellent decisions, it seems like the programmers and curators of the red carpet festivals haven't seen that many genre films in their lives.
For a horror film lover, watching Kim Jin-young's “The Other Child” in Tallinn Black Nights' First Feature Competition feels like a chain of déjà-vus. An adopted child arrives, strange things start happening, is it the child or someone else… So, we need to talk about Isaac (Song Ha-huyn). That would be the name of a little boy who gets adopted by the priest of a local community after one of his four children, a wheel-chair bound Han-byul drowns. Now, Isaac is called things, he is ‘awkward' and rejected by his previous guardians for ‘seeing things'. In this film, so many people have exactly the same ability that the boy stops being odd soon enough. So, Isaac is not our Haley Joel Osment, because only few others around him don't see dead people.
Going back to that little detail whose family the child gets into, we already have a number of other connections to diverse horror classics, or at least the bumbling attempt to use some of their formulas. Fortunately, the excorcism is just the talk of the film, and we get spared of all the flying and foaming around the mouth. But not the power of Lord, no m'am. When you don't know where to seek help, the God almighty will help. The crosses, the prayer, the complete Vatican first aid kit is ready to chase the devil away. Which of course, it never really does.
For everything religious in the movie, Kim Jin-young was inspired by an interview with a Catholic priest who explained that evil doesn't have to be something concrete, but more like dark memories and dark ideas from the past that we hold in ourselves. If anything, the fluidity of the evil might explain the planless nature of its deeds.
Sinister from the opening scene with a melancholic piano solo following the priest's wife (Park Hyo-ju) strolling through the fog, the photography, handled by the first time cinematographer Kyun-sang Yang keeps the gloom going. Sometimes this sentiment gets replaced by a sheer admiration for the beauty of the nature surrounding the family house: the forest and the lake, where most of the crucial scenes happen.
From beginning to end, “The Other Child” struggles with originality. Moreover, the story is suffocated by the many ‘ifs'. The brain constantly works on figuring out the options: who might really be possessed in the house, or how many, or is anyone, and why are the others outside of the household as well (a young man played by the musician Cha Sun-woo)? Who are the folks in the woods? What happened? Who died and who is alive? How come? Was it necessary? Actually, the only right question would be: how many twists do you need to keep the story flowing without turning it into a tornado of ideas that rummage through the film?
“The Other Child” is a film for horror newbies who can simply enjoy watching children of great acting talent perform. Particularly strong is the 11-year-old child star Kyung Da-eun in the role of the creepy, eldest daughter Joo-eun. The movie had its international premiere in Tallinn.
