Since his transition from animation to live-action, Korean writer-director Yeon Sang-ho has struggled to recapture the success of his breakout hit, the zombie action thriller Train to Busan.
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Writers: Kyu-Seok Choi, Yeon Sang-ho
Stars: Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyeon-bin, Shin Min-jae
Yeon's latest film, Revelations, is an adaptation of a 2022 comic book he wrote with Choi Gyu-seok.
It centers on an ambitious pastor, Sung (played by Ryu Jun-yeol), who takes the law into his own hands when he encounters a recently released sex offender, Kwon (Shin Min-jae), shortly before his own daughter disappears.
Emboldened by what he believes to be divine intervention, Sung pursues Kwon with predictably disastrous results.
Traumatized Detective Lee (Shin Hyun-been), whose sister was kidnapped and tortured by Kwon, driving her to commit suicide, is also in the ex-criminal's sights.
Perpetually haunted by her sister's ghost, who urges Lee to avenge her death, the newly reinstated Lee is horrified to see Kwon back on the streets.
While Yeon strives for a more grounded and realistic tone than in his previous genre works, Revelations nevertheless falls victim to the same vague logic and flimsy plotting that has plagued many of his recent projects.
On the positive side, Yeon gleefully attacks the corporatization of religion in Korea, where Christian megachurches have sprung up across the country and wield incredible power without sufficient legal oversight.
Sung sincerely believes that God's will empowers him, creating an intriguing contrast to Lee, who wields legitimate authority while driven by horrific delusions from beyond the grave.
Sung's increasingly misguided antics recall the events of Kim Seong-hun's 2014 film, "A Hard Day," but lack the darkly comic tone that made audiences laugh alongside Lee Sun-kyun's absurd antics.
Both characters operate under the idea that Kwon is guilty by pure association and that the mere idea that he has been rehabilitated is absurd. That their unfounded assumptions soon prove true is a troubling confirmation of these prejudices, which surface all too often in Korean cinema.
Bad people are simply bad people, incapable of change; for them, concrete evidence and due process are as unnecessary as they are inconvenient. Sometimes, it seems that a suspicious appearance is proof enough.
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