The inevitable can be scary. Whether it’s something as simple as a doctor’s appointment or a job interview, the clock ticking down to a crucial moment holds a special, unique portent, no matter how well the moment will go. But what if you were given an appointment for your own death? That is the central question danced around by Lee Yun-seok‘s emotive thriller, “You Will Die in 6 Hours”, which finds its greatest strength not in its grasp of time, but the timeliness of its story.
You Will Die in 6 hours is screening at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival
Lee Jung-yoon (Park Ju-hyun) is a woman at the end of her twenties… and the end of her tether. Working every hour of the day to scratch out an impoverished living, her thankless jobs as a post office worker and a garage cashier have her going nowhere fast. At least, that is until she is confronted in the street by Jun-woo (NCT U‘s Jaehyun), a mysterious loner afflicted with the unfortunate ability to glimpse people’s deaths, and it just so happens his latest vision is of Jung-yoon’s grisly demise at the tattooed hand of an unseen man, right at the moment she turns 30. The unlikely pair form a bond to stop the inevitable and figure out not only who is baying for Jung-yoon’s blood, but why.
The concept of “You Will Die in 6 Hours” is a great hook for a thriller. With the obvious timebomb at its center predetermined to explode, there is ample room for a pacey exploration of character and place, with every new corner promising danger and fear. Strange, then, that the lateral moves pulled by Chung Young‘s screenplay (based on a novel by Kazuaki Takano) are less concerned with the walls closing in as it is looking at the writing on them. Jung-yoon’s downtrodden existence up to this point has seen her work as an escort, a chapter she is not terribly proud of, made worse by an uncomfortable history with a stalker who is an emblem of the putrid misogyny driving the drama. It’s heavy stuff, nobly shouldering damning critiques on the gig economy and the negative perception of sex work in the modern era, yet often at the expense of keeping the killer thriller premise from reaching its true potential.
Perhaps the most ill-advised turn taken by “You Will Die in 6 Hours” is the substantial subplot involving a team of detectives on the case of a serial killer, with each victim previously warned that they would die that very night. Kwak Si-yang and Lee Soo-jung are the crack squad searching for the next would-be victim, and Chung’s thematic focus mines a similar vein to the A-plot’s treatment of misogyny at large. However, breaking the perspective centered on Jung-yoon and Jun-woo clutters the action and slows the narrative flow down to a sputter, setting up for an unsurprisingly rug-pull that is possible to trace from the very beginning. By the time the clock strikes midnight, each box has been ticked and every thread has been tied off, which is slightly disappointing given the impossible mystery at the center of the film.
The performances from the two leads are solid, both playing muted, broken individuals struggling to trust or reach out to each other when their lives are on the line. Park Ju-hyun in particular is great at playing a young woman wise beyond her years, having lived and suffered a life long before the action catches up with her. NCT U fans will also no doubt enjoy Jaehyun’s moody sad-boy turn as he wrestles with a superpower that feels more like a curse than a gift, making a sturdy feature film debut as a leading man after a career at the top of the K-pop game. Kwak Si-yang also supports with a dangerous, multi-faceted performance that recalls the pale, slick presence of Lee Byung-hun‘s best work, cutting an imposing figure from the sidelines and giving the film a much appreciated jolt of energy whenever the counterintuitive structure rubs up against the inherent intrigue of its main idea.
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While never reaching the nail-biting heights suggested by its razor-sharp title, “You Will Die in 6 Hours” proves to be more successful as a considered drama than a fine-tuned thriller. It moves with a stride rather than a sprint, confidently laying out its wares while sidestepping more traditional thrills. What it lacks in unpredictability, it makes up for in its true-to-life message and its central character’s emotional resilience.
