Korean Film

The Uninvited
4 인용 식탁 (4 Inyong shiktak) (2003)

Jung-Won, an interior decorator, is overcome with inexplicable anxiety as his long-overdue wedding with Hee-Eun approaches. One evening, Jung-Won falls asleep on the subway on his way home. He is barely able to wake up at the last station. As he comes round he sees two young girls asleep on the seat next to him. He can't wake them before he has to jump off as train leaves the station. He arrives home to find that his wife-to-be has bought them a new metal dinning table.

The next day, Jung-Won is working when he hears on the radio that two young girls were found poisoned on the subway. In the course of fitting some lights in a ceiling he is hit by falling debris and cuts his forehead. After a trip to the hospital for some stitches, he goes home to find the two dead girls sat at his new dinning table.

Jung-Won, who is now working on renovating a psychiatrist's office, bumps into Yun, a patient on her way out of a therapy session. She has been receiving treatment after her friend, Jung-Sook, killed both of their children a year earlier. Another accident leads to Jung-Won taking Yun back to his apartment where she too sees the apparition of the dead children.


Having been tormented by nightmares and the hallucinations, Jung-Won is desperate to find out something about the apparitions that haunt him. Yun runs away refusing to help him, so he searches through the patients' records at the clinic to find out more about her. Using the information he succeeds in persuading her to help him and she tells him things about events in his past he had tried to forget.

Unfortunately, he suffers the consequences rediscovering his past. His fiance Hee-Eun suspects that he is having an affair and leaves him. Jung-Sook is convicted of the murder of Yun's child, but she suddenly commits suicide as she is leaving the courthouse. Shocked, Yun calls Jung-Won who comes over to console her. He talks to her husband, Moon-Sub, who suspects that it was his wife, not her dead friend, who killed their children.

Jung-Won, caught up in his desire to deny his past and his fear of Yun, turns down Yun's cry for help when her husband tries to have her committed to a mental hospital. His refusal crushes Yun who throws herself off Jung-Won's apartment building. Jung-Won sees her as she falls. In the final scene Jung-Won's sits in his dust covered apartment. Face lined like an old man, he brings a steaming dish of food to the dining table and sits down.

His dining table is full, not with the family he had been planning but the apparitions of the two poisoned girls on the subway and Yun.


Guess, you've already seen this movie?
I am not 100% sure if this film was also released here in the Philippines... (?)



The Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
장화, 홍련 (Jang-hwa, Hong-ryeon)

Eun-joo, the stepmother, welcomes two sisters who come back home after recovering their health, but Su-mi, the elder sister, intentionally avoids her and Su-yeon, the younger sister, shows a smack of fear for her stepmother. On their first night, Su-yeon sneaks in Su-mi's room confessing there is someone in her room and Su-mi sees a ghost of her late mother who hung herself in Su-yeon's closet. Strange things begin to happen since then; a ghost haunts the house and stepmother's birds are poisoned to death. Assuming Su-yeon is behind the inauspicious incidents, the stepmother locks her in the closet, and when Su-mi learns about the cruel punishment, conflict between the stepmother and two sisters gets bitter than ever.

One day, Mu-hyun, the father goes to town and Su-mi finds there is no sign of her younger sister, Su-yeon and Su-mi sports Eun-joo dragging a big bag through the dark corridor leaving bloody stains behind her. Su-mi follows bloody trace of the bag and she confronts with Eun-joo on her way of tracking. They starts to fight vehemently and Su-mi falls down struck by Eun-joo in the end... A while later, Mu-hyun comes back to the house and founds Su-mi fallen on the floor alone and enraged Mu-hyun exclaims that Su-yeon was already dead. His exclamation awakes a series of memories and hidden secrets buried deep inside of Su-mi.
Source http://www.cineclickasia.com

The first time we watched this movie, (TRIVIA-it was the last movie I watched with some friends, schoolmates and Rachelle Ann Go when she was still a finalist of Search for a Star singing competition.) we went out the cinema with a huge question mark in our heads - WHAT HAPPENED?  It was quite confusing then.  But as I watched it again for the second time, I finally understood the twist of the story which then, leads to this another film...
 


The Uninvited (2009)


After the death of her ill mother in a fire, the young teenager Anna tries to commit suicide and is sent to a mental institution for treatment. Ten months later, Anna still cannot remember what had happened on the night her mother died. Her psychiatric Dr. Silberling, however, discharges her telling that she has resolved her issues. Her father and successful writer, Steven, brings her back home in an isolated mansion nearby the coast. Anna finds that her mother's former nurse, Rachel Summers, is her stepmother now. Anna meets her beloved sister, Alex, swimming in the sea. She discovers that Steven has not delivered the letters and CDs that Alex had sent to her. As time moves on, Anna is haunted by ghosts and she believes that Rachel killed her mother. Alex and Anna decide to look for evidences to prove that Rachel is the murderer and Anna discovers the truth about the fire in the boat house.
Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

If you've seen the second film I've mentioned, it wouldn't be that confusing for you to watch and understand the story of the third film ~
Everytime I watch films, I make sure I do not get myself too attached with the movie itself.  However, I appreciate how Korean films are being conceptualized, it's like I'm always having a logical exams trying to figure out the connection and relation of one scene to another.

xoxo

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