In 2019, South Korean black comedy thriller Parasite scooped the greatest image Oscar. For a lot of viewers, it catapulted them over the 1-inch subtitle barrier right into a treasure trove of South Korean cinema.
On the prime of the glowing pile is one other South Korean movie, The Name. Launched on Netflix in 2020, it shares the identical Oscar-nominated editor as Parasite: Yang Jin-mo. If you happen to’re a fan of environment friendly, distinctive storytelling wrought with suspense, you’ll be able to’t afford to overlook it.
Oh Younger-sook (Jeon Jong-seo) is a power to be reckoned with.
Netflix
The Name is ready in rural Korea, the place 28-year-old Kim Web optimization-yeon makes the journey house to go to her estranged, sick mom. Crucially, she loses her telephone on the practice journey over. This deadly error sees her compelled to make use of a cordless telephone. After one fateful telephone name, a real nightmare unfurls.
Web optimization-yeon interacts with one other 28-year-old girl — Oh Younger-sook — who cries for assist from her personal “loopy” mom. The trailer-advertised reveal: Each ladies are in the identical home, however from totally different occasions. One is in 2019, the opposite in 1999. Cue superior ’90s Korean grunge music.
With this unusual connection, Web optimization-yeon within the current timeline is enticed to tinker with the unlucky occasions in her previous. The one catch is that this depends on her friendship with the opposite girl on the road, whose circumstances is perhaps much more hellish than her personal.
The very fact these ladies work together with out assembly head to head reveals the profound ability of actresses Park Shin-hye and Jeon Jong-seo. They embark on a cat-and-mouse tug of battle, tiptoeing throughout a minefield of unknowns and potential threats. The strain is unrelenting.
The ensemble is rounded out by the ladies’s moms, performed by the equally extraordinary Kim Sung-ryung and Lee El. Lee El particularly produces the type of unhinged guardian efficiency that haunted youngsters like Carrie, Coraline and Norman Bates.
Each side of the filmmaking course of has clearly been siphoned by way of a fragile sieve. The eye to element is immaculate. In addition to editor Yang Jin-mo, the filmmaking staff consists of Avengers: The Age of Ultron and The Nice Gatsby colorist Vanessa Taylor. You may discover a purple hue sheathing the scenes with Web optimization-yeon within the current timeline, representing her disappointment and despair. Previously, Younger-sook’s scenes glint with purple, refracting anger, hazard and violence.
The stress you’re feeling as the sport performs out is testomony to how deeply The Name attracts you in. Sure, it presents a high-concept time journey mind-melder, nevertheless it’s all propped up by the pillars of the mother-daughter relationships. Oh, and there is a lesson in there someplace concerning the value of fixing your destiny, however fortunately this is not thrown with a splat in your face.
Like a Bong Joon-ho movie, right here director and author Lee Chung-hyun drops a surprising halfway twist that adjustments all the things you understand concerning the taking part in area. All of it wraps up in an emotionally satisfying ending earlier than squeezing out one final heart-clunking shock.
The Name is verdant, creative, subtle storytelling that leaves you buzzing for the type of top-notch movies that do not typically discover their means onto Netflix. Dislodge it from the again of Netflix’s streaming cabinets ASAP.