I Saw the Devil
Rated: R for graphic depictions of violence
Director: Jee-woon Kim
Writer: Hoon-hung Park (screenplay)
Starring: Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik choi, and Gook-hwan Jeon
Summary borrowed from IMDB: When his pregnant fiancee becomes the latest victim of a serial killer, a secret agent blurs the line between good and evil in his pursuit of revenge.
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Wow. I don’t even really know where to start with this one. I’m not even sure if I even liked it or not, and I highly doubt that I’ll ever watch it again. But that’s just my personal preference.
This is a revenge movie ala “Oldboy” or “Otis,” though this movie keeps it real.
Starts off with a woman having a flat tire and being stuck on the side of a mountain road. While she waits for the tow truck, she calls her fiance. His advisement: “Lock the doors and stay put. Wait for the tow truck.”
While she’s waiting, a van drives up and a man gets out. He taps on her window — she’s smart enough not to open the door — and offers to check things out. She tells him she’s waiting for the tow truck, but he insists.
Creepy guy fiddles around near the tire while she’s still talking to her fiance. She tells her fiance goodbye and hangs up, then settles in to wait for the tow truck. Which is about the point that creepy guy pops up and tells her to open the door. She says no… and things get serious.
He busts in her car window with a hammer, thumps her with it on the head, then roughly drags her body to his van. At this point, I thought that she was dead and was horrified, but relieved that her ordeal was over.
It was not.
The awful sexual things he does to her are not shown on screen, though you can tell she went through some real trauma by the damage to her body when she wakes up naked and wrapped in plastic. She pleads with him, tells him that she’s pregnant, and he basically shrugs and is just like “Wow, a twofer” before beating her to death and chopping her body up.
And that was just the first like ten minutes of the movie.
“I Saw the Devil” is one of those things that you cannot unsee. It twines its way into your brain and you simply cannot look away even though you desperately want to, because throughout the whole thing you’re hoping that somehow things are going to turn out all right.
This movie is gritty and dark, though the cinematography is clean and clear and you maybe see way more than you want to.
The killer is just that — a killer. Even while he’s being horribly tormented, he still needs to rape one more girl, kill one more person, and basically just bathe in that much more blood.
And the MC — oh, that’s all, just oh. He has so many opportunities to just get some and get gone, but he has to prolong the revenge scenario until every aspect of his life and the lives around him are ruined. It is one of those human tragedies and is the basis for the title: I saw the devil, and the devil was me.
Do not watch this movie if you have a weak stomach. This isn’t quite the orgy of violence that the “Saw” and “Hostel” franchises have become — for one thing, this movie has an actual story — but it is intensely graphic and disturbing. I spent the bulk of this movie with my hands over my eyes asking the people in the room with me “Is it over? Can I look yet?”
This movie is a thing of nightmares, not just for the images depicted, but for the idea that it could be real.
Rating: 3
