Tag: Moon Woo-jin

The Accordion Door (아코디언 도어, Son Kyeong-su, 2025)

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A young man with an apparently prodigious talent for writing comes to doubt himself when past trauma provokes what may either be a strange delusion or a very real exit of the muse in Son Kyeong-su’s supernaturally tinged exploration of the pressures of the contemporary Korean society, The Accordion Door (아코디언 도어). Constantly berated by his overly demanding mother as a small child for not being good at anything, Ji-soo (Moon Woo-jin) lives in fear of being labeled “a dummy” but has simultaneously become almost entirely detached from the world around him.

This is partly because he has no memories of himself before the age of nine when he went temporarily missing. In the opening sequences, the young Ji-soo is taken around an exhibition explaining the precipitation cycle by his parents who are each too busy sniping at each other to pay much attention to him. His mother blames his father’s lack of effort for Ji-soo’s apparent inability to fill in a worksheet demonstrating that he’s understood that water from the river becomes clouds and that clouds become rain. Crying on his own in the toilet, he poetically wonders if he too has become a cloud only for a cloud-like, or perhaps wormlike, being to enter his brain through his ears, turning him into an apparently different person who is addicted to chocolate and can perfectly articulate his thoughts in writing.

But as good a writer as Ji-soo might currently be, having recently won a national competition, he carries a strong sense of inferiority and worthlessness that’s largely caused by the seemingly conditional nature of his mother’s love which may be withdrawn if he were to become “a dummy”. His mother has separated from his father under the rationale that this will help make Ji-soo a better writer and is constantly pressuring him about winning more competitions. In a way, her determination is self-reflective in that she does not want her son’s mediocrity to make her look like a mediocre mother. When Ji-soo asks what he was like as a child, she tells him that he was “ordinary” and now he’s “brilliant”. When she replaces the expensive phone he had that got broken after he finally agreed to have one, she remarks that it’s just the kind that “ordinary” boys have, in case it gets broken again thereby presaging the fall from grace he undergoes believing that his talent has left him and migrated into Hyeon-joo (Lee Jae-in), the football-playing transfer student that Ji-soo has developed a crush on.

Hyeon-joo was the reason Ji-soo agreed to get a phone, but he’s equal parts attracted and threatened by her. He doesn’t know much about football, but it seems like she might not be all that good. When she starts to get better all of a sudden, his jealousy manifests in the paranoia that his talent left him for her, and he desperately wants it back so that he won’t be a “dummy” even if it ends up ruining his relationship with Hyeon-joo. Hyeon-joo, meanwhile, is much more laidback if just as alienated as he is. For her, it doesn’t matter if she’s any good at football as long as she enjoys it. She tries to encourage him that it’s the same with his writing. It shouldn’t really matter whether or not he wins any prizes, it only matters if he felt good while he was doing it. Her poet mother is the polar opposite of his own, encouraging Hyeon-joo to do what she likes doing and be happy even if there is nothing more to be gained of it than that. Becoming ever more insecure, Ji-soo tries to ask her for writing lessons, but all she tells him is that writing is an art that can’t really taught by one person to another. He must simply learn to teach himself. After all, he didn’t follow any rules when was writing something he was later proud of.

His science-obsessed friend Jong-yoon is similarly cheerful, rejoicing in his curiosity rather than thinking about what it might lead to or be worth to him in the future. Ji-soo’s mother had also been preoccupied with height, taking him to a doctor who seemed to be giving growth hormones, only for his growth spirt to begin as soon as he thinks his talent has left and bits of the past, or his imagination of it, start coming back to him. In a way this literal growth maybe a sign that he has begun to unpack some of his trauma and is experiencing a breakthrough that is destructive in the moment but also allows him to move forward. His mother lets up and finally divorces his father formally, while he no longer needs to be constrained by the idea that whatever talent he had was given by some mysterious parasite that took root inside him, but perhaps came from himself if only he could learn to embrace his love for it rather than be scared into silence by his fear of not being good enough. The implications of Ji-soo’s dreams maybe rather melancholy if lending an elliptical quality to his existence, but Son’s quietly empathetic, abstract film, does for a time at least allow him to find solace in his art in a sometimes unkind and judgemental society.

The Accordion Door screens as part of this year’s London Korean Film Festival.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Dark Nuns (검은 수녀들, Kwon Hyeok-jae, 2025)

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Large organisations have a tendency to gloss over inconvenient truths, but is it really in keeping with the teachings of the Church to ignore a confirmed case of demonic possession and allow a boy to die rather than admit that demons are real and members of the clergy are conducting successful exorcisms? According to Sister Giunia (Song Hye-kyo), a chain-smoking nun with a penchant for vulgar language, it is not, but she is largely hamstrung because of the ingrained misogyny of the patriarchal superstructure of the Catholic religion.

A spin-off from 2015’s film The Priests, Dark Nuns (검은 수녀들, Geomeun Sunyeodeul) goes in hard for the Church’s hypocrisy. As Giuna squares off against a powerful demon when taking over from two priests who’ve botched an exorcism on a teenage boy, it taunts her that the blood of all the demons she has slain will echo in her womb like a drum. There’s a suggestion that the existence of a nun is itself is an affront to God, as if a woman who has rejected her maternity and remained celibate is an aberration suggesting that a woman’s only proper role lies in motherhood. The fact that Giuna is later diagnosed with uterine cancer implies the same, as if she has cursed herself in her decision to serve God and become a bride of Christ. In her final confrontation with the demon, it tells her again that she will die of the tumour in her womb, a fact she already knows, but Giunia counters that she will exorcise the demon from this boy and use her womb to imprison it. Which is to say, she will kill him with her maternity and thereby fulfil her ideal role by becoming a “mother” to this demon, and symbolically to Hee-joon (Moon Woo-jin) the possessed boy, before condemning them both to the flames. 

This fact itself is ironic, as the council at the Church refused her request to conduct an exorcism because she is not ordained and “only” a nun. Of course, a woman cannot be ordained in the Catholic Church and the priesthood is open only to men. Her powerlessness within the organisation makes it easy for them to dismiss what she is saying while writing her off as a crazed devotee of the weird teachings of Father Kim, the priest from the earlier film. When they finally do give permission for an “unofficial exorcism” after Giuna has contacted the Rosicrucians in Rome to borrow some holy artefacts necessary for the ritual, the council inform her that the exorcism will be performed by Father Paolo (Lee Jin-wook). A sceptic who believes demonic possession is a psychological phenomenon not a spiritual one, Father Paolo is an odd choice but there is something quite moving and transgressive when in he fact takes off his priestly robes and places them over Giunia’s shoulders, ordaining her and acknowledging both that what she has said is true and that she is the only person who can carry out this exorcism. 

This is doubly true as Father Paolo had also tried to use the teachings of the Church to press another nun, Sister Michela (Jeon Yeo-been), by leading her to believe that her own spiritual awareness was a psychological illness that she should struggle to overcome through faith and medicine. It seems that Michela and other women like her may have found themselves retreating within Catholicism to reject the destiny of becoming a shaman while she herself was placed in a Catholic orphanage as a “cursed” child born between a human and a demon. Giuna had friend who was once a fellow nun but has now left to assume her true calling as a shamaness. The two remain good friends and often work together while Giuna is open to the presence of other gods and other forms of spiritual divination such as Michele’s talent with the Tarot. As such, all of these practices exist within a wider spiritual universe which is another challenge to the Church’s oppressive rigidity in its denial of folk beliefs and ancient traditions. After all, there is no real gender bias in shamanism, or if there is, it runs the other way for the majority of shamans are women. 

In any case, beating the demon requires everyone to work together for a common goal using, as the Rosicrucian father says, “all available means”. Through participating in the exorcism, Sister Michela begins to accept her own identity later continuing to work with Deacon Choi to track down the remaining 12 Manifestations while accepting Sister Giuna as a mentor figure. They are each in a way freed from the Catholic Church while simultaneously remaining inside of it as they progress with their mission of quieting the demonic forces at large in the world and protecting the innocent from their rippling evil. 

Dark Nuns is released digitally in the US July 15 courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Hijack 1971 (하이재킹, Kim Sung-han, 2024)

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Newspaper-style Korean-language poster featuring a stock photo of a burning place and circular photos of the cast members in black and white.

When a passenger plane is hijacked and forced to fly to North Korea in 1969, the Korean Air Force pilot ordered to fire on it refuses. He recognises the pilot and realises there is something wrong. If there is a hijacker on board, he fears that that he may kill the pilot and crash the plane, killing everyone on board, and while his commanders remind him that the plane should be able to land on just one engine, he knows that if he hits the fuselage instead, the plane could blow up. Even if they land in North Korea, isn’t it better everyone survives?

Not according to some in Kim Sung-han’s Hijack, 1971 (하이재킹, Hijacking), inspired by a real life incident. Tae-in (Ha Jung-woo) is summarily dismissed from the air force for his insubordination while otherwise ostracised as the man who allowed the plane to reach North Korea. As he predicted, most of the passengers are returned home shortly afterwards, but 11 never see the South again including his friend the pilot, Min-su (Choi Kwang-il). Meanwhile, Min-su’s wife (Kim Sun-young) continues to face harassment for supposedly being a communist sympathiser. Now working for a commercial airliner, Tae-in also faces discrimination from his new colleagues who, ironically, don’t trust him to properly protect passengers. All their assumptions are tested, however, when a young man sneaks a bomb on board and threatens them to fly to the North apparently inspired by the previous case in which the hijacker was given a hero’s welcome for successfully kidnapping so many useful people.

What’s immediately obvious is how easy it still was to get a bomb on a plane. Yong-dae (Yeo Jin-goo) simply packs them into some tin cans and wraps them up like a picnic. When boarding opens, the passengers literally sprint past each other to get the best seats because they weren’t yet reserved, and when we see a passenger start smoking, we assume the stewardess will tell him not to yet she simply points out the ash tray in the arm of the seat and asks him not to drop ash on the floor or woman sitting next to him. One woman also delays the flight because she’s brought a live chicken with her to make a soup for her daughter whom she’s travelling to see because she’s ill. Tae-in scores an early win and the goodwill of (most of) the passengers by defusing the chicken situation and allowing the woman to keep it on the condition she has it on her lap for the duration of the flight. 

Letting the old lady keep the chicken signals Tae-in’s consideration for his passengers’ welfare and happiness, while the air marshal becomes so preoccupied with this minor breach of the rules that he fails to notice the suspicious behaviour of the hijacker. The presence of the air marshal, a precaution taken after the previous incident, also proves counterproductive when he’s injured when the first bomb goes off, allowing Yong-dae to steal his gun. Granted, this is a fairly minor flight from a provincial airport to Seoul so maybe no one really thought there was much need for advanced security, but they really are woefully underprepared for this kind of incident, especially after the pilot is seriously injured and can’t see well enough to fly alone, meaning Tae-in also cannot do very much to respond to the hijacker’s threats. 

But what we come to realise is that it’s really society that’s been hijacked by the extreme prejudice directed towards “communists” and the North. The passengers from the first plane were returned, but spent time in interrogation to make sure they hadn’t been turned. A newlywed passenger also remarks that a fisherman friend of his was abducted and the police haven’t stopped hassling him about being a spy ever since he got back. Yeong-do’s motive is that he faced constant and unwarranted harassment, including being scalded with boiling water as a child, because his older brother defected to North Korea. His mother later died when he was carted off to prison for being a supposed sympathiser, while other passengers on the plane are similarly worried that their families will starve if they end up in North Korea or are detained when they return. 

A minor subplot, meanwhile, explores the prejudice faced by an older woman travelling to Seoul with her son, who has become a prosecutor. She is deaf and unable to speak, but her son tells her to stop signing because it’s embarrassing him after noticing disapproving looks from another woman in hanbok across the aisle. The old lady had also taken her shoes off after getting on the plane as if she were entering someone else’s home signalling both her politeness and lack of familiarity with modern customs. Her son had repeated the stewardess’ instructions to put them back on, but addresses her like stranger when telling her not to sign. In a way, this casual prejudice is the same and directed at someone simply for being different. Even so, there’s something quite tragic about her son being ordered to tear up the prosecutor ID card she was so proud of. Eventually she swallows it herself to make sure no trace of it remains, telling her son not to worry she will always protect him even in North Korea though he has not done very much to protect her here.

Tae-in later does something similar when he encourages Yong-dae that they should all go on living to ensure no one else endures the mistreatment he has and we don’t end up with any more incidents like this. Though his behaviour is increasingly deranged, it becomes easy to sympathise with Yong-dae for enduring so much suffering for something that was really nothing to do with him while we’re constantly reminded that if the plane lands in North Korea everyone on the plane and all their relatives will also suffer the same fate. At least facing this disaster together eventually forces the passengers to set aside their petty prejudices and pitch in to save the plane so they can get home to their families even if it’ll take them a bit longer to get to Seoul. Though the outcome is already known to the home audience, Kim Sung-han keeps the tension high and defines heroism largely as compassion and selflessness in Tae-in’s continued efforts to ensure the safety of his passengers rather than playing politics or allowing himself to be swayed by those who think landing in North Korea is a fate worse than death.

International trailer (English subtitles)