Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2019
Images from the Internet
A Record of Sweet Murder (aka Aru yasashiki
satsujinsha no kiroku)
Directed by Kôji Shiraish
Nikkatsu / Zoa Films / Unearthed Films / MVD Visual
86 minutes, 2014 / 2019
How far would you go for your career? Would
you risk life and limb? Is your ego that strong?
These are some of the questions that are subtly
asked in this film from South Korea (in Korean and Japanese, with subtitles). While
less personal than the Irish release, Do You Recognise Me?” (2015) there
is actually an overlap in asking those same questions.
The big difference is there is a possible
supernatural element in this film. An escapee from an asylum, Park Sanjoon (Je-wook
Yeon), is on a killing spree because he is desperate to raise someone from the
dead. He claims the voices in his head from God tells him he needs 27 victims,
and so far, he’s up to 25; at that point, even those he killed will be resurrected,
though he is not sure how. So, a news reporter, Kim Soyeon (Klobbi Kim) and her
camera dude, Tashiro (Kôji Shiraish, the film’s director) accept his invitation for an interview and
to make – err – a record of sweet murder. Personally, I’m not sure I’d accept
the invitation, no matter how much possible glory there might be at the end. But
they’re hoping for the best as Soyeon and Sanjoon share a childhood friendship.
When the three meet, no doubt it’s fraught and
tense with Sanjoon holding a knife and other assorted weapons. He is waiting on
a Japanese couple to show up, and once he’s done away with them, it’s showtime.
But – and it’s a big one – things are not as simple as they appear. This couple
have their own excitable violent issues (and one of them, Ryôtarô Yonemura,
seems to have an issue with overacting), which continues to keep the viewer
guessing what will happen next.
The tension constantly builds and by the
half-way point the ferocity never lets up. Most of the action takes place in a
single room of an abandoned apartment building, which gives you the feeling you
and they can not escape without some damage being done. I won’t go into detail
about that, but it’s definitely brutal with so many twists and turns, there is
little burnout for those of us who enjoy this kind of thing.
All the action we see is through the
single lens of the camera held by Tashiro. Normally, found footage films bore
me, but this takes a different angle in that the entire film is one continuous
shot; not like Hitchcock’s Rope which had to have subtle breaks because
of how much film a canister could hold, but in a digital world, this is
possible. Needless to say, everything is in real time.
Because it’s all in one shot, I wonder
about the pragmatics of the film, such as rehearsal and script. Was it mostly
adlibbed or strictly written? These are the kinds of thoughts films like this bring
to mind to those of us who study cinema rather than as a casual viewer.
Most of the acting is quite good, but Je-wook
Yeon is the standout by far (Tsukasa Aoi does a pretty good job of it in a very
physical and primordial role). While it’s clear he’s quite nuts and will do
whatever it takes to achieve his deadly goal, he is also pitiable because it’s
not a method he’s comfortable with and it pains him to take lives. At one point
he wails, “I can’t do it by myself anymore.”
As for the violence itself, it’s not on the
level of something like Audition where it’s more torture porn than story;
here it’s the very real process of stabbing, clubbing, choking, etc., and the camera
doesn’t lovingly swarm around it, but rather keeps it shocking and uncomfortable
(though I’m betting there are those who might wish it was the other way around).
This is being put out by Stephen Biro’s
company, Unearthed, that has been releasing some interesting Asian films such
as the Guinea Pig Series and others like Brutal (2018) from Japan. Their
catalog has been consistently fierce and yet with quality. A Record of Sweet
Murder is a great addition to their canon.
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