Year released: 2017

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Main Cast: Cho Jin Woong, Shin Goo, Kim Dae Myung, Lee Chun Ah

*warning* this review was written under the influence of DayQuil.

Bluebeard (해빙) is another movie from Well Go USA Entertainment that has me doubting all the good in life. Okay, not really but it really is a dark film. Thanks to Netflix for carrying it, I guess. They really have been keeping up to date on all the latest Korean movies and trying hard to provide them to customers who enjoy them, like myself.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

According to Asian Wiki, Bluebeard is a movie about Seung-Hoon, who is an internal medicine doctor. He opened a clinic in Gangnam, Seoul, but the clinic went bankrupt. He then lands a job at a hospital run by his friend in a satellite city of Seoul. Seung-Hoon then becomes involved in a series of murder cases. The murder cases are connected when a woman’s severed body comes out from the melting Han River.

I am going to blame the DayQuil on this one. This video had me so tripped out. Seung-Hoon was just trying to live his life and make ends meet. Take care of his son and pay his alimony to his ex-wife. He moved into this small 2 room apartment above a butcher and that’s when things started to go wrong. Pretty much the beginning of the movie.

I’ve never gotten a colonoscopy but I don’t think people really talk during their exams, right? Especially not the way his patients did. They were telling him everything from what they were doing with their spouses to how to properly dismember a body. Yup, you read that right.

Once his landlord dropped that little gem during his visit, Seung Hoon became uneasy around him. That made things especially awkward when the main butcher, Sung Geun kept popping up, asking for drinks. I felt uneasy around him, so I’m not sure how Seung Hoon managed to befriend him.

During these drinking sessions, Seung Hoon would begin to hallucinate. He kept seeing a black bag that had a head in it. The hair color would vary throughout the movie, but it bothered me that no one else freaking noticed a damn head in a bag thrown about the butcher shop. And that’s another thing, this butcher shop never had any customers. I don’t know how they stayed open (bygones).

 

At any rate, while Seung Hoon is dealing with this madness, his ex-wife pops up. She is a real catch and I mean that in the

most sarcastic way possible. She goes from fussing at him for having his mail come to her address to dissing where he lives to…I think they had sex? I don’t know honestly. They go from being in the car to arguing in his apartment in their underwear. They get so loud with their arguing that weird ole Sung Geun comes up to check things out. He looks around and sees the ex’s shoes and puts two and two together. Seung Hoon apologizes and says he’ll keep things down and closes the door in his face.

Sung Geun comes back later under the guise of needing to fix the mirror Seung Hoon’s ex broke and invites him down to the butcher shop for a drink. Naturally, Seung Hoon goes. My question is why? The guy makes you uncomfortable and his father may have confessed to being a serial killer so why bother? While Seung Hoon is there, Sung Geun leaves to get more alcohol (these dudes are freaking drunkards) and Seung Hoon stumbles into the freezer for some reason. Naturally, he sees the damn head. He starts screaming and wakes up in his bed. How did he get there? Was he dreaming? All these questions I had and none of them get answered.

Bodies start popping up and Seung Hoon catches his nurse (who I swore had a crush on him but did something later in the movie that had me questioning my deductive skills) stealing drugs and the movie has gone from 60 to 120mph and I’m trying to keep up. There are police sniffing around, Seung Hoon is trying to figure out if he’s hallucinating the head in a bag or not when *bam* his ex disappears.

Now he thinks the butcher has something to with it so he tries to contact the police over it but not before his son pops up and tries to go visit his dad. Seung Hoon is at work and tells the son to get on the bus. We see the butcher pass the bus stop while his son is waiting there and we never see him again. I don’t know if the boy is killed, if he never existed or what but things really start going downhill for me and this movie.

Seung Hoon is frantic about his son and races home. He attacks someone in his home and runs out and gets hit by a car. He wakes up in an office of who he assumes to be the inspector that has been trying to solve the crime of the bodies that have been piling up. All this leads to a final showdown back in the butcher’s shop in the freezer. Seung Hoon is convinced that he can clear everything up, all he needs is that damn head in the bag.

Now I pause here because I have to say, any respectable serial killer/murderer would have thrown out that bag long ago. At the very least, they would have hidden it better then what he did.

Getting back into it, there’s an…average fight scene where Seung Hoon and Sung Geun try to kill each other. The police come and this whole ordeal is finally over. Or is it? Somehow, SOME – FREAKING – HOW, Seung Hoon is the one who ends up in handcuffs.  I don’t know how Sung Geun did it, but man EVERYONE turned on Seung Hoon. Folks that I didn’t even realize were part of this, turned on him. He ended up in the psych ward and everything goes back to normal.  The movie left me thinking that maybe I had fallen asleep and missed some major points.

 

But wait! That’s not the end because we get to follow the butcher’s father after Seung Hoon is locked up. The one who started this whole thing with his mutterings. We see what he was up to before Seung Hoon moved in. Once that little tidbit is shown, the movie is over and you (I) am left sitting with my mouth hanging open like what the hell?

*sigh* This movie reminds me of the American movie The Usual Suspects becuase you need to watch it a few times in order to understand a everything. Check it out and let me know what you think.