It is no secret that Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is an impeccable piece of cinema. Not solely did it scoop the finest image Oscar in 2019, it catapulted viewers over the 1-inch subtitle barrier right into a treasure trove of South Korean movies.
On that very same glowing pile sits one other excellent South Korean flick, 2020’s The Name. Launched on Netflix, The Name shares the identical Oscar-nominated editor as Parasite: Yang Jin-mo. In the event you like your storytelling environment friendly, distinctive and wrought with suspense, The Name will generously present.
Oh Younger-sook (Jeon Jong-seo) is a drive to be reckoned with.
Netflix
The Name is about in rural Korea, the place 28-year-old Kim Website positioning-yeon makes the journey residence to go to her estranged, sick mom. Crucially, she loses her telephone on the prepare journey over. This deadly error sees her compelled to make use of a cordless telephone. After one fateful telephone name, a real nightmare unfurls.
Website positioning-yeon interacts with one other 28-year-old lady — Oh Younger-sook — who cries for assist from her personal “loopy” mom. The trailer-advertised reveal: Each girls are in the identical home, however from completely different instances. One is in 2019, the opposite in 1999. Cue superior ’90s Korean grunge music.
With this unusual connection, Website positioning-yeon within the current timeline is enticed to tinker with the unlucky occasions in her previous. The one catch is that this depends on her friendship with the opposite lady on the road, whose circumstances is likely to be way more hellish than her personal.
The very fact these girls work together with out assembly nose to nose reveals the profound talent of actresses Park Shin-hye and Jeon Jong-seo. They embark on a cat-and-mouse tug of warfare, tiptoeing throughout a minefield of unknowns and potential threats. The stress is unrelenting.
The ensemble is rounded out by the ladies’s moms, performed by the equally extraordinary Kim Sung-ryung and Lee El. Lee El particularly produces the sort of unhinged dad or mum efficiency that haunted children like Carrie, Coraline and Norman Bates.
Each facet of the filmmaking course of has clearly been siphoned by means of a fragile sieve. The eye to element is immaculate. In addition to editor Yang Jin-mo, the filmmaking crew contains Avengers: The Age of Ultron and The Nice Gatsby colorist Vanessa Taylor. You may discover a purple hue sheathing the scenes with Website positioning-yeon within the current timeline, representing her unhappiness and despair. Prior to now, Younger-sook’s scenes glint with crimson, refracting anger, hazard and violence.
The stress you’re feeling as the sport performs out is testomony to how deeply The Name attracts you in. Sure, it presents a high-concept time journey mind-melder, however it’s all propped up by the pillars of the mother-daughter relationships. Oh, and there is a lesson in there someplace concerning the worth of adjusting your destiny, however fortunately this is not thrown with a splat in your face.
Like a Bong Joon-ho movie, right here director and author Lee Chung-hyun drops a surprising halfway twist that adjustments every thing you recognize concerning the taking part in subject. All of it wraps up in an emotionally satisfying ending earlier than squeezing out one final heart-clunking shock.
The Name is verdant, ingenious, refined storytelling that leaves you buzzing for the sort of top-notch movies that do not usually discover their approach onto Netflix. Dislodge it from the again of Netflix’s streaming cabinets ASAP.
