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 he Quiet Family" is the debut film by Korean
director Kim Ji-Woon, who has been attracting a considerable amount of
attention recently with his complex and multi-layered "A
Tale of Two Sisters". The two films are similar in a number of
basic ways, and both are concerned with macabre events that befall
dysfunctional families in isolated rural areas. However, whilst
"Sisters" was a tragic exploration of grief and guilt, "The
Quiet Family" is a black comedy which is by turns hilarious, grisly,
and moving.
The film shares its plot with
Takashi Miike's "The
Happiness of The Katakuris", which is basically a musical reworking
of the same story. Of the two, "The Quiet Family" is probably the
better film as, though lacking the amusing insanity and set pieces of
Miike's effort, it has a real emotional core, and a genuinely likable set of
well-written characters whose antics are both entertaining and affecting. By
spending as much time on the relationships between these people and on their
situation as he does on the more unpleasant aspects of the film, Ji-Woon
manages to achieve the rare success of perfectly balancing horror and comedy
without having to resort to spoofing or over the top gore.
The film's title refers to the Kang family, who moves
to a remote mountain area to run a hotel for hikers. The family is a mixed
bunch, consisting of the mother (Mun-hee Na, recently in the lame comedy
"Please
Teach me English") and father (In-hwan Park, from "One
Fine Spring Day"), an uncle (Min-sik Choi, star of the excellent
"Oldboy"),
a son with a criminal past (Kang-ho Song, "Sympathy
for Mr. Vengeance"), and two daughters, the elder of which is
desperate for love, and the younger (Ho-kyung Go, also in the director's
"Foul
King") who is cynical, vaguely gothic, and provides the narration
for the film.
After a long, lean period without any guests, a lone,
mysterious stranger turns up at the hotel, takes a room for the night, and
promptly commits suicide. Terrified of attracting bad publicity to their
already ailing enterprise, the older members of the family decide to bury
the corpse in the woods rather than report it to the police. Unfortunately
this sets in motion a chain of events and a rapidly increasing number of
cadavers for them to deal with as they desperately try to keep their hotel
running and to conceal the deaths from the rest of the family.
The film's main strength is undoubtedly its
characters. Ji-Woon, who also wrote the film, made the effort of creating
a believable family, whose bickering, arguments and relationships with
each other are realistic and engrossing. Each character has distinct
personalities, secrets, desires and motives, and each goes through their
own character arc during the course of the film, generating not only
viewer interest, but also sympathy. This gives the film an excellent
grounding, and as well as adding impact to the scenes of horror, it
increases both the tension and frantic comedy as events become more
surreal and the situation for the family begins to look increasingly
bleak.
Ji-Woon is not only utilizing his characters to drive
events, but also to generate atmosphere and mood, especially through
Ho-kyung Go's deadpan narration. The ways in which the family members
instigate their own subplots and follow their own desires before
ultimately coming together is actually quite touching and inspirational.
The cast is thankfully excellent, and really brings their characters to
life, with special attention paid to the smallest details and nuances.
This is quite different from so many genre films, especially those
attempting to fuse comedy and horror, which are generally filled with
characters that are little more than stereotypes or obviously constructed
walking jokes. Min-sik Choi is particularly good as the uncle, a quiet,
lovelorn and adaptable man. Also good is Kang-ho Song, who puts in a manic
performance as the sex-obsessed son suspected of foul play.
Ji-Woon's direction is confident and assured for a
debut director, and he wisely eschews cheap shocks and forced laughs in
favor of a gradual rise in tension and in generating a somber, creepy
atmosphere. The hotel itself resembles the house in "A Tale of Two
Sisters", with a rich tapestry of pale colors, creaking floors and
strange angles all giving it its own melancholy personality. This provides
the perfect setting for the film's events, and its oppressive, tomb-like
feel acts as an effective and gloomy trap for the family as their
situation worsens. The exteriors are similarly well shot, with the bare
trees and ominous mountains enclosing the house like a graveyard,
increasing the sense of isolation, and in a thematic sense, pushing the
family closer together against such cold, lonely surroundings.
The film moves along at a brisk pace, and although
there are only a few standout scenes, Ji-Woon keeps things interesting
through the shenanigans of the characters themselves. The story itself is
fairly predictable, especially as it is made quite clear early on that
pretty much every visitor to the hotel is marked for death in one way or
another. However, the characters themselves are unpredictable, and this
keeps the viewer interested in their reactions to events, as well as their
ultimate fates.
There are a few 'action' scenes for genre fans, and
things do frequently get quite bloody, especially during the corpse
disposals and a few outbreaks of violence. However, these parts of the
film, whilst unpleasant, are not gratuitous, and are quite often played
for their comical rather than visceral impact.
Overall, "The Quiet Family" is an excellent
film, an amusing and engaging black comedy that should appeal not only to
fans of Asian cinema but to viewers in general. It plays upon the
universal theme of family, and through investing time in its characters,
whilst not stinting on its more horrific elements, the end result is a
film which is well worth seeking out.
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