© 2008 William Ahearn
Bodies – in pieces – are being found in Seoul, South Korea, and the police discover a rather disturbing twist: The pieces don’t match. Parts of one victim are being dumped with parts of another victim.
So begins Chang Youn-Hyun’s 1999 film “Telmisseomding” (Tell Me Something), a serial killer thriller from Korea that while not bringing anything groundbreaking to the genre – in fact it uses some of the worst plot devices from US serial killer films – handles the material in an interesting and stylish way. What’s interesting in watching films from foreign cultures is that even if they do typecast, you don’t know the actors anyway so everything is still a surprise to you.
This isn’t some silly love story wrapped around the suspense of a serial killer. This is a creepy and clever whodunit and somewhat graphic. There is also a very funny scene sending up Hollywood when a body is dumped on a highway. A dark, ambiguous, and unsettling film that tells its story in small revelations.
For information on the only known Korean serial killer, go here.