Two thousand and three was a weird year for Korean cinema. Hard on the heels of the paradigm shift of 1999-2001, domestic films managed to overtake Hollywood’s numbers at the box office. In 2002, a string of failures (including Resurrection of the Little Match Girl, an absolutely wild movie from Jang Sun-woo that pretty much bankrupted Tube Entertainment) caused rumors of a crisis in film investment. A weak first quarter of releases doubled down on this feeling of pessimism until Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder emerged in May, leading off a string of hits and stone-cold classics, most notably E J-yong’s Untold Scandal, Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, and Im Sang-soo’s A Good Lawyer’s Wife. Ultimately, eight of the top 10 highest-grossing films in Korea from 2003 were produced in that country, with Kim Jee-woon’s third feature, A Tale of Two Sisters, among them.
Following the critical success of his two lower-budget genre films A Quiet Family and The Foul King, Kim looked to a classic Korean folktale The Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon to craft one of the most visually impressive Korean horror films ever made. The source material had been adapted for the screen several times previously (twice by Korean kung-fu film legend Chung Chang-hwa), but Kim took the Joseon-era tale and placed it firmly within a modern psychological horror framework.
Recently discharged from a mental institution, teenage Su-mi (the wonderful Im Soo-jung) returns to her family’s house with her father and younger sister, Su-yeon. She is hostile toward her stepmother (the always riveting Yum Jung-ah), who had been a nurse for the sisters’ late mother. Su-mi has constant nightmares about her mom’s ghost, and while over for dinner one night, her aunt suffers a seizure and swears she saw the spirit of a girl under the kitchen sink. Relations in the house quickly deteriorate as everyone’s mental health unravels, and it becomes clear that this may be one wicked, abusive stepmother.
A Tale of Two Sisters is a singular, stunningly beautiful achievement in Korean horror. Every aspect of the lakeside house’s interior design (floral wallpaper and lush carpets galore) and color palette (deep greens and reds that become more pronounced, almost overbearing, as the film proceeds) is designed to keep viewers on edge, and to underline the increasing instability of the occupants. Violent, heartbreaking, and truly terrifying, A Tale of Two Sisters rewards your attention, and further cemented the director’s place as one of the major talents of the Korean New Wave. Even if all the end revelations don’t fully gel, they still effectively add to the fog of guilt and sadness that pervades the entire film—decades before Hollywood decided that mental health was a main source for the new era of horror. 🩸
lives in rural Connecticut across from spooky old ruins in the woods. He is part of Boondocks Film Society, a group that programs unique pop-up film events in Litchfield Hills, the Hudson Valley, and the Berkshires. He has programmed for Film at Lincoln Center (Scary Movies, My First Film Fest) and Subway Cinema (New York Asian Film Festival, Old School Kung Fu Fest). He has written extensively about Asian cinema, most recently co-editing an issue of NANG magazine dedicated to Archival Imaginaries in Asia.
X: @rufusderham
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