The observer and the observed. One passive, one active. One a cat, the other a mouse. One a potential victim, the other a potential victimiser. In short, this provocative relationship has been the lifeblood of thrillers big and small the world over since the beginning of cinema, and the camera itself has become an extension of the self as the medium has evolved…and mutated. And now, with advancements in technology making cameras smaller and smaller, their usage has become more and more insidious and dangerous. Yeon Je-gwang's “The Guest”, a stripped-back feature debut (adapted from his debut 2016 short) set in a seedy motel with a tiny cast, utilizes ideas old and technologies new to fuel some sick thrills across 77 minutes that leave you needing a hot shower to wash off its determinedly unpleasant aura.
The Guest is screening at Busan International Film Festival
The setting is a dimly lit sex hotel off the beaten track. Its flickering neon sign promises good hearty ramen, but inside every room, there are lurid images of nude women adorning most walls. Room service offers beer and local prostitutes available with just one phone call, and the clientele are only there for the dirtiest of thrills, making it a safe haven for the horny and perverted alike. There's just one catch: its owner has the walls and lighting fixtures fitted with discreet cameras, capturing the most intimate moments between people without their knowledge. Two lackeys Young-gyu (Han Min) and Min-cheol (Lee Ju-seung) begrudgingly do the day-to-day room service, cleaning up stains and throwing away bottles while also making sure all the footage is backed up and sent off to paying clients. One stormy night sees a suspicious visitor (Jeong Soo-kyo) arrive giving an unconscious woman (Oh Hye-won) a piggyback into a room, and the two nightshift workers are thrust into an icky moral quandary: intervene and run the risk of implicating themselves and their operation, or do nothing and come away with blood on their hands.
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It's classic slasher fare: a restricted location, main characters lacking in many virtuous qualities, a scream queen victim and a dastardly villain so evil that they make the scumbag protagonists look like heroes in comparison. Slashers of days gone by, often navigated their moral pitfalls by cashing their chips into pace, gore and body count, and Yeon has clearly understood what makes them tick. There's a ruthlessness to how he's telling this story that keeps things moving at a frenzied pace, rarely stopping in one place to let the characters catch their breath. When the film does slow down, it does so to try and give you someone to root for, whether that be Oh's damsel in distress or the two young idiots in way over their heads. Yet this is where the film stumbles, never really justifying the actions of its cowardly concierges, despite efforts to show why they've taken on such a foul job. Even Oh fares badly, not getting nearly enough characterization beyond her endless suffering, leaving the overall picture the film paints as a fairly ugly one.
However, through its misguided stabs at making Young-gyu and Min-cheol sympathetic, it does sit alongside “Parasite” in a new movement of Korean drama concerning what people will do for money in an unfair society. “The Guest” may function primarily as a straightforward, down-and-dirty slasher for most of its action, but there is something interesting to be found in the reasons Young-gyu and Min-cheol do the unthinkable. It's lightly political despite never satisfactorily mooring its characters as people you can care about, and illustrating inequality as another sickness (alongside misogyny, voyeurism and extortion) in the film's fabric does make it more cutting.
ECHOBRIDGE's score can be a little overbearing for Yeon's obvious talent as a horror filmmaker, as his images and pacing are more than enough to induce some dread in his audience. His choice of location screams Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and while there is no lingering, haunting atmosphere here that can be found in Kurosawa's best work, it nonetheless occupies a similar realm of unease. Kurosawa's work also thrives on silence and sharp edits to things we shouldn't being seeing; Yeon could have this if he wasn't so reliant on music or blaring sound that tells the audience how to feel at every turn. Thankfully, he directs Jeong Soo-kyo's villain to great effect, keeping his muttering serial killer at a simmer behind a pair of dead eyes and a strikingly strange costume choice (a Chicago Bulls tracksuit has never looked so menacing). It's those touches that work best, ensuring the film remains as mean as possible while keeping the action as lean as possible.
By the time “The Guest” reaches its savage conclusion, viewers can expect to feel a little queasy as the credits roll. Its subject matter is rightfully bleak and its pace impressively relentless, yet there's a hole in the centre of the experience that doesn't offer any constructive conclusions to why we should care about characters that have committed such heinous acts. As a result, there is little catharsis to the torment and suffering endured by everyone at the hands of its eponymous madman, even when it makes sure to remind you of how evil he can get. Yeon's film shows promise for future projects, particularly in his lack of fear in confronting hard-to-stomach subject matter; he simply needs to find its metaphorical heart, not just its literal gory one.
