Following on the success of his successful commercial career, director Kim Hyun-jun initially directed the web series “Can You See My Heart” before turning to genre fare with “Rhapsody for the Dead.” While following the typical formulas of the occult genre, this film attempts a unique twist with its hybrid settings focusing on the inability to determine the reality around the protagonist while struggling to understand a curse happening around her.
Rhapsody for the Dead is screening at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival
While trying to live her life, Soo-ah (Im Do-hwa) struggles with an ability to see ghosts and spirits of others around her which infuriates her friends Yoon-mi (Gwak Su-jin) and Hyeon-woo (Song Seung-hyun) while they hang out on vacation. When an accident threatens Soo-ah and leaves Yoon-mi and Hyeon-woo with a dead body on their hands, they decide to enact a plan that will leave them in the clear of the incident. When it becomes apparent that’s not the case, spirit exorcist Anuat (Anupam Tripathi) is called in to deal with the issue, which allows him to realize that the spirit is following them and forcing everyone to pull their expertise together to stop the malicious entity.
Generally, “Rhapsody for the Dead” has a lot going for it. Among the positives featured here is an intriguing storyline from writer/director Hyun-jin that incorporates a slew of seemingly disparate elements into a somewhat chilling narrative. The main focus is initially set up to be Soo-ah, only to have an accident switch perspective on everything shortly after this. That turns the perspective onto Yoon-mi and Hyeon-woo which becomes all the more suspicious when their relationship is revealed which taints how these earlier interactions played out. With the secondary storyline involving Anuat trying to solve the case with the police officers, it creates a simple enough storyline that develops into a solid mix of supernatural mysticism and traditional police forensic investigations to get this going nicely enough.
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With this in place, “Rhapsody” works nicely enough in terms of its genre set-pieces. The series of ghostly visions and hallucinations that take place here are nowhere near the top of the genre, but the scenes of the spirit making Hyeon-woo believe that she’s not dead or causing Yoon-mi to believe she has been targeted by an otherworldly spirit in her house, offer up some generally fun moments. The later half, where the exorcist Anuat comes into play, offers up a more spiritualistic approach. His ability to see spirits around him and confront them means there’s a solid series of encounters not just dealing with the mother in a flashback or the big encounter with the spirit inside the police station where everything comes out about the relationship between everyone. Featuring some solid lighting effects to show the spirit enacting its revenge in these scenes, there are some fun elements present.
One of the biggest drawbacks here is the confusing and scattershot storyline that sets up elements nicely but also has quite a lot going on. The main idea of having Soo-ah get killed and the spirit come back for revenge against Hyeon-woo and Yoon-mi has a simplistic quality that works fine enough, but trying to add more weight to this story ends up confusing matters more than anything. Adding in a twin sister in Jin-ha to Soo-ah who’s also an exorcist would be fine if it was revealed earlier. As it comes out during the final stages of the big confrontation in the police station, the implication that this important piece of information detailing why these figures are together gets lost because it makes no sense to come out at the point it does and makes little impact.
As well, there’s also the big issue with “Rhapsody’s” pacing that also causes some issues here. The odd touch of using Soo-ah’s death at the very start only to then try to make this strange exorcist Arnuat the main character after this introduction to Yoon-mi and Hyeon-woo is a strange one. By suddenly trying to make a mysterious stranger wandering around the countryside performing mystic practices the new lead, it comes off confusing when there was an investigation going on into the death to begin with. Not only that, but the need to then try to backtrack and add on the backstory of not just Arnuat but also Jin-ha ties up the plotline so the few attack scenes of the spirit come off sparingly in the running time. Particularly as these converging storylines leave the film to end up feeling watchable but formulaic of other genre efforts.
Fun enough for what it is but also let down by some big factors, “Rhapsody for the Dead” is a mostly serviceable entry in the genre but never rises above that due to its drawbacks. It’s mainly worthwhile for diehard Asian horror fans or the most undiscerning viewers of the style.
