死不张扬离奇失魂事件

Body counts are high in Kim Jee-woon’s THE QUIET FAMILY, a black comedy set in a rural lodge for hikers managed by the Kang Family: middle-aged Kang Dae-goo (Park) and his wife Jeong Soon-rye (Na), their three adult children Young-min (Song), Mina (Go) and Mi-soo (Lee Yung-seong), plus Dae-goo’s bachelor younger brother Chang-goo (Choi Min-sik). The sextet’s initial lassitude takes a morbid turn when the first three guests of their lodging business are suicidal-driven head cases.

Branded as a filmmaker with a partiality for horror and violence, in his first feature, Kim demonstrates his sophisticated knack of calibrating a sensible equilibrium between the dreadful (great ambient work from low-ceiling darkness, subdued decoration and an eerie score) and the comical (the golden rule is, however grisly things turn out, the family emanates no premeditated malice). And THE QUIET FAMILY consistently rides on a spine-tingling overtone while knowingly tickles our ribs, many plots are perversely counter to genre tropes, like a valiant brother’s attempt to save his sister being ravished by a horndog, its end result is well within our expectation, but the process is far more whimsical and diverting. That said, any attempt to seek even a tenuous rationale is futile as its genre enjoins that suspended disbelief is a prerequisite.

Courtesy to a rip-roaring cast, which includes two major Korean superstar in their salad days, Song Kang-ho and Choi Min-sik, both establish themselves as cracking comedians with proactive/reactive duality and prompt comical timing. Veteran players Park In-hwan and Na Moon-hee are more adept in deadpanning, whereas two young starlets Go Ho-kyung and Lee Yun-seong simply require to be either pretty or flirtatious.

Theme-wise, Kim marries a strangely amusing vibe of hysteria, that reaches an apt crescendo in the end, where they become “a quiet family”, with a faint political jab in the background (North Korean spies are at large). In the event, it is a wacky gore-fest even for the mildly squeamish, all’s well that end’s well, thankfully.

referential entries: Kim Jee-woon’s THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD (2008, 6.9/10), A BITTER LIFE (2005, 5.4/10).