Insane (날, 보러와요, 2016) – Movie Review (영화 리뷰)
Welcome to the land of Korean cinema.
I watched today’s movie simply because I
liked the title, it’s a 2016 mystery thriller
called „Insane”.
The movie stars Kang Ye-won and Lee Sang-yoon.
Lee Sang-yoon is a reporter who loses his
investigational tv show in the beginning of
the movie.
A year later he hears about a young woman’s
case who had apparently murdered her father
and claims to have been locked up in an illegal
mental hospital for a year.
The reporter goes after the case in hopes
of getting his job back.
„Insane” is a movie that does some things
right.
Mystery thrillers are a great genre for tension
building and if the story is intriguing enough,
it keeps the audience on their toes up until
the very end.
I do think that the story here has potential,
especially because the movie starts with the
woman’s abduction, it’s very sudden and
surprising.
And thankfully the movie dedicates a lot of
time to show us what had happened to her in
that one year, and those sequences are the
best part of the movie.
Thankfully the movie chooses the show don’t
tell approach when it comes to her time in
the hospital, even though she’s telling
the story to the reporter,
or anything, it’s all played out in front
of us.
And it’s pretty horrific, I mean, it’s
not like a horror movie, but she does expereince
a lot of things she really shouldn’t have.
Every tension, everything that makes this
movie a thriller is coming from these scenes,
dare I say… those are the only good or interesting
parts of the movie.
Unfortunately the characters are very one
dimensional, Lee Sang-yoon as the reporter
just wants to get his position back, he has
no interest in the woman as a human being,
so it’s impossible to sympathise with him.
And Kang Ye-won as the young woman… while
it’s absolutely terrible what she goes through,
her character’s also not a very well fleshed
out one.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a heartless
bastard, I sympathise with her situation,
I just don’t know show she is as a human
being, does that makes sense?
But there’s a bigger problem.
Since the whole movie is basically her remembering
what had happened, there are little to no
actual stakes in the movie.
Because whatever happens in the hospital,
we know that she’s gonna make it.
So there’s no real weight to anything that
happens, despite the movie having some pretty
good sequences which I really enjoyed.
But since I knew that she’s gonna make it,
it was hard for me to immerse myself in the
movie, because I already knew the outcome,
you know what I mean?
Beides that, the first 20-30 minutes of the
movie are really boring an uninspired.
It’s a lot of dialouge scenes with a lot
of close-ups, a lot of shot-reverse shot is
happening, and it makes the movie look terribly
dull.
Not to mention how boring and dry those dialogues
are, and how exposition heavy they are.
I kept thinking to myself that there must
be a twist in the story somewhere, because
despite this being a mystery thriller, there
was little to no mystery.
So I thought there must be something else
underneath the surface.
And there is, and it works, and it’s thanks
to that that the movie doesn’t leave a sour
taste in your mouth.
The problem is that the ending would’ve
been much more powerful, had some information
were revealed to us earlier.
I can’t go into details, but there are some
things that could’ve been very powerful,
if we had time to process them.
But we don’t.
But thankfully, at least it makes sense.
If the characters were stronger, if the movie
didn’t spoil itself by making the hospital
scenes flachbacks, AND if the movie gave us
certain information a little eariler, this
could’ve been a pretty good flick.
Instead it’s something that I enjoy parts
of, but overall it’s pretty boring, unfortunately.
Because of the things I liked I’m gonna
give „Insane” 60%.
If you’re looking for a pretty light thriller,
this might be a good choice, I also had some
fun with it, judge by yourself.
But I wouldn’t watch this ever again, that’s
for sure.
