Paradise Murdered: Grim, grimy, gory, grotesque... and good!

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Category: Reviews

The New York Korean Film Festival 2007, presented by Helio and organized by The Korea Society:

Paradise Murdered will be screened on

- Tuesday, August 28th 2007, 9:00 PM. At the IFC Center

The tiny but lively community that lives on the remote island nicknamed “Paradise Island” (Gukrak-do) is, as the epithet suggests, a peaceful, almost utopian micro-society. Or would be, if a gruesome murder had not taken place after a long night of gambling, ripping the apparently seamless fabric of this (very) small world, and leaving two hideously mutilated corpses to the shock and dismay of the 17 islanders. 

As they decide to investigate the matter, led by the local doctor, Chae Wu-Song, tension and paranoia grow strong and wild and everyone on the premises becomes a potential suspect and a target of the faceless murderer.

The investigation, through a succession of unreliable narratives, leads the viewers to many a dark corner of the human heart, deceiving one expectation after the other.

After the first murder takes place, one of the rural residents immediately puts the blame on a fellow village, Deok-Su, who came into his house and dumped a bag of blood-stained money on his floor on that fated night. Or so he claims. Later on, the same “witness” confesses that he is not sure if Deok-Su really came into his house or he just dreamt that he did. Perpetually deferring the moment of the final “revelation”, Paradise Murdered proceeds by accumulating dis-appointments (which doesn’t mean the film is disappointing, even though its proceedings can be, for some viewers). Never quite here, nor there, the killer is a spectral presence whose very existence hangs by a hair’s breadth to reality. It is no wonder then, that the film often threatens to become a proper ghost story, complete with the long-haired female revenante (yet another clone of Sadako, of Ring fame).In this sophisticated whodunit, the island becomes a theater of skepticism in every form, to the point that it feels as if the film doubted itself.

In this respect, Paradise Murdered seems to borrow a variety of elements from heterogeneous source materials that range from classic films and TV shows of various origins like Memories of Murder (with which it shares its lead actor, Park Hae-Il, who pulls off a striking performance once again), Lord of the Flies (because of its reflection – questioning of?-  on human nature: inherently good? irreparably bad?), Gilligan’s Island, Battle Royale, The Island Of Dr. Moreau, and even… Lost.

Of course, one can only speculate about the actual influences of this film (even though it is tempting to compare it, on many levels, with Memories of Murder), but as it turns out, Paradise Murdered mirrors and alters those familiar elements within a popular/lower-class Korean background and the generic context of a thriller, which it twists in rather odd ways by pulling it in different (and sometimes opposite) directions.

The suspenseful dynamics of the film is driven by the lurking proximity of a third party (Deok-Su, the third player of the hwatu game). An intruder who would also be familiar. A stranger that you would actually know quite well. In other words, or rather, in Freud’s words, an unheimlich character: uncanny. Indeed, in the ironically called Paradise Murdered, there is always the menacing possibility that someone else, somehow or other, was involved. And this uncertainty, this indetermination is, it almost goes without saying, what generates fear and anxiety. If teeth grinding harder and harder as the residents try to figure out what exactly is happening on Paradise Island, it is because of this absence of a firm, defined/definite ground. On the one hand, the system in which the narrative is set is not unusual, but on the other hand, some of its sequences defy logic and closure, in the last instance. What stands out of this grim, grotesque and gory ensemble, is the cold mask-like face of Park Hae-Il as the unreadable doctor, not only his discreet but remarkable appearance (rather than performance) in Memories of Murder, to which, in many ways, it could be a companion piece. In the end, a fascinating and fun first movie for Kim Han-Min, who will be in NYC to introduce his film to American audiences.