Director: Kwak Kyung-taek
Notable Cast: Kim Rae-won, Kim Hae-sook, Sung Dong-il, Jang
Young-nam, Jeon Hye-jin, Lee Ji-won, Baek Bong-ki
In the last few years, the South Korean market has started
exporting some pretty intriguing genres. Horror, in particular, made quite the
splash just two years ago. The Wailing
and Train to Busan erupted from South
Korea to take the international world by storm. When the first trailer for RV: Resurrected Victims slyly slipped
online from Well Go USA, the same company that released the previous two films
in the US, it looked like it would be a third film to add to the critical
success of the other films mentioned. In fact, the tone and concept almost
seemed to be a combination of the two films as it focused on resurrected dead people
and what looked like a substantial amount of existential dread. These were the
expectations that I proudly strapped on for my journey into the film. These were
also the expectations that sabotaged most – if not all – my pleasure in
watching RV: Resurrected Victims.
Instead of a thorough examination of the social and cultural impacts of its
concepts, victims returning from the dead to seek vengeance on those who killed
them and were not punished by justice, RV
stumbles through and ends up being a cliché riddled detective procedural that
embraces the South Korean thriller formula with a ‘safe is better than sorry’
attitude rather than shooting for the stars. Compared to the heights of
execution that made The Wailing and Train to Busan immediate critic and fan
favorites, RV just rings hollow and
hardly can even be considered horror to make those comparisons.