But it’s the psychological aspect that sets I Saw the Devil apart in the genre.
There’s certainly no shortage of gory action scenes that, by their own accord, are technically impressive bits of camerawork. Though Joo-yeon’s death serves as Soo-hyeon’s call to action, the focal point of the plot quickly devolves into an exploration of the erosive nature of revenge on the soul. This film, on the other hand, repeats this technique several times and it never gets easier to see.īut I Saw the Devil is much more than a well-shot torture flick. Rarely are we allowed, even for a few brief seconds, to meditate on the grotesque scene before us. It is a deeply disturbing moment, but one that is unique in the “torture porn” genre, to which I Saw the Devil could easily belong. Time stops as the hope that Joo-yeon’s fate may not yet be sealed clashes with her inevitable death.
#I SAW THE DEVIL FULL#
The camera pauses on this moment, and the viewer is confronted with the full weight of what Joo-yeon is feeling. The sequence occurs in Joo-yeon's car, after the passerby, Kyung-chul (Choi Min-sik), begins his attack, where the camera focuses on Joo-yeon's face, terror in her eyes, as a line of blood trickles down her face. It is this opening scene that sets the bar for the movie-a single gorgeously shot sequence in particular-and over the 130 minutes that follow, Kim continues raising the bar that he himself set. When a passerby stops and asks if she needs help, she nervously declines. Soo-hyeon (Lee Byung-hun), a secret agent, is on the phone with his fiance, Joo-yeon (Oh San-ha), as she waits on the side of the road for a tow-truck. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the South Korean release of I Saw the Devil. In 2010, Kim Ji-woon, director of South Korean hits like The Quiet Family (1998) and A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), pushed his own boundaries by miles, creating a film that has over the past decade confounded horror fans by combining hyper-violence with a cinematic poetry that is difficult to equal.
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