Having been on a bit of a dry spell watching my collection of South Korean movies I decided that today would be a good day to select one from amongst the pile and go for it. Feeling that I was in the mood for a good laugh, I just looked at the front of each DVD case until I found one that I thought would be humorous. Ssunday Seoul was the one I decided on and while the film is humorous in some parts I found it leaning more towards the bizarre.
Consisting of three shorts that are loosely connected by a couple of reoccurring characters, Ssunday Seoul delves deep into the supernatural which is beneath the mundane happenings in Seoul. While the film has an overall campy, and somewhat cheesy, feel to it, it is quite fun and in some parts it can be quite chilling as well. Here are the stories: The Werewolf: In the opening short the viewer is introduced to Bong Do-yeon a hapless young man who is continuously tortured by the school bullies. To make matters worse he is also in love with the most beautiful girl in the class and, of course, his love is unrequited. However, Bong Do-yeon's life is going through some changes. If these changes will actually make his life better remains to be seen, but it is definitely going to make his life interesting.
The Visitor: With his car broken down on the side of the road and with his cell phone's battery dead, Lee is desperate to make a phone call home. When he is unable to get help from a couple of delivery boys, he makes his way to a large, luxurious home and knocks at the door. A beautiful girl dressed in white allows him to enter her home so that he can make his phone call. While inside the home, Lee listens to a television broadcast and the viewer learns that there is a serial killer afoot. Lee then goes into a long monologue describing how a person would react in their last moments of life. The most chilling segment of Ssunday Seoul, The Visitor is quite graphic in a number of ways, but it is tinged with dark humor and has quite a twist at the end.
The Young Adventurer: This segment opens with a single passenger plane pulling up to a gas station. The young female attendant not quite sure what kind of fuel the plane needs puts light gas into the tank: she reasons that a light plane needs light fuel. The plane soon explodes. Later, a young man named Tae-pung, typhoon, arrives riding on a motorcycle tugging along a coffin on wheels. Planning only to stop briefly, Tae-pung is forced to return to the station because the girl put kerosene in his tank instead of gas. There he is beaten unconscious by a gang. The girl takes him to her father's Daoist temple and after he awakes Tae-pung begins his training to seek revenge for his father.
Ssunday Seoul is an enjoyable film overall and, as I stated before, The Visitor is in fact quite chilling. However, there are definitely many other South Korean films that are of much higher quality and provide better entertainment. Yet if you have this film and need to kill 95 minutes, go for it!
Consisting of three shorts that are loosely connected by a couple of reoccurring characters, Ssunday Seoul delves deep into the supernatural which is beneath the mundane happenings in Seoul. While the film has an overall campy, and somewhat cheesy, feel to it, it is quite fun and in some parts it can be quite chilling as well. Here are the stories: The Werewolf: In the opening short the viewer is introduced to Bong Do-yeon a hapless young man who is continuously tortured by the school bullies. To make matters worse he is also in love with the most beautiful girl in the class and, of course, his love is unrequited. However, Bong Do-yeon's life is going through some changes. If these changes will actually make his life better remains to be seen, but it is definitely going to make his life interesting.
The Visitor: With his car broken down on the side of the road and with his cell phone's battery dead, Lee is desperate to make a phone call home. When he is unable to get help from a couple of delivery boys, he makes his way to a large, luxurious home and knocks at the door. A beautiful girl dressed in white allows him to enter her home so that he can make his phone call. While inside the home, Lee listens to a television broadcast and the viewer learns that there is a serial killer afoot. Lee then goes into a long monologue describing how a person would react in their last moments of life. The most chilling segment of Ssunday Seoul, The Visitor is quite graphic in a number of ways, but it is tinged with dark humor and has quite a twist at the end.
The Young Adventurer: This segment opens with a single passenger plane pulling up to a gas station. The young female attendant not quite sure what kind of fuel the plane needs puts light gas into the tank: she reasons that a light plane needs light fuel. The plane soon explodes. Later, a young man named Tae-pung, typhoon, arrives riding on a motorcycle tugging along a coffin on wheels. Planning only to stop briefly, Tae-pung is forced to return to the station because the girl put kerosene in his tank instead of gas. There he is beaten unconscious by a gang. The girl takes him to her father's Daoist temple and after he awakes Tae-pung begins his training to seek revenge for his father.
Ssunday Seoul is an enjoyable film overall and, as I stated before, The Visitor is in fact quite chilling. However, there are definitely many other South Korean films that are of much higher quality and provide better entertainment. Yet if you have this film and need to kill 95 minutes, go for it!
