Review: END OF ANIMAL, or The Apocalypse Comes to the Korean Countryside

Contributor; Seattle, Washington
Review: END OF ANIMAL, or The Apocalypse Comes to the Korean Countryside

End of Animal is screening as part of Subway Cinema's Free Korean Movie Night on Tuesday, October 11 at 7 PM. Details can be found at the Subway Cinema site.

You would think that a mature viewer who's been out of the country a few times and had the pleasure of growing up around diverse cultures their entire life wouldn't be so surprised that, hey, some South Koreans take Christian end-of-days theology as seriously as we do here in the West.

There's no valid reason for this particular blindspot in my worldview to exist, and I've seem ample portrays of a potent strain of evangelism in a few recent movies over the years. The doc Grandmother's Flowers used Christianity as a backdrop for the class division in a village wracked by crimes committed by the poor right-wingers against the wealthy and middle-class left-leaning citizens, while Park Chan-Wook's Lady Vengeance and Thirst drew on a very Catholic sort of grace and shame respectively. I only bring up my own (accidental, probably stupid to even elaborate on) ignorance because it made End of Animal a more jarring experience, drawing as it does, so specifically yet obliquely from evangelical end of the world paranoia in a feature that's stumbles occasionally but is on balance, a sufficiently unsettling look at the capital-E "end."

The story pits a very pregnant young woman, Sun-Yeong (Lee Min-Ji), against said end of days as she tries to make it back to her countryside home in time for the birth of her child. At the start of the film, she's chosen to take a taxi from Seoul to her mother's house in the country, when abruptly, a strange young man hops in the front seat next to the driver and begins to reveal all sorts of things about these two people he's presumably just met before throwing out ominous warnings. Then, there's a flash of light, Sun-Yeong and the driver are knocked out, and when they awake, the car and their phones don't work. It's the middle of winter, bitterly cold, and neither Sun-Yeong nor the driver know how to get to the next rest area for help.

From there, the movie follows the truly messed up things that happen as our pregnant lead tries to make her way home as she's goaded on and warned by the mysterious man via the sole working radio. Along the way, she meets a disturbed, almost feral child, a bickering couple, and a lonely, very desperate man. Menaced, beset by hunger, and completely lost, things don't seem like they can get much worse, until mysterious growling noises start popping up in the distance. I won't spoil here what the source of this sound is, but credit to director Jo Sung-Hee for working with his effects team to bring such an interesting... construct to the screen.

As for the rest of the movie, the lead's misadventures are truly harrowing (particularly a point where she's forced to go without shoes, and later, when she has to hunt a makeshift meal). The major flaw is that repeatedly, she's given warnings about what not to do by the mystery man/angel on the radio, and each time she ignores him, she puts her foot in the proverbial mess. A couple of scenes later in the movie provide some possible context as to why she distrusts this man, but they come after so many missteps on her part that it has the net effect of making her look a little dim.

Still, with cinematographer Baek Moon-Soo's handheld camera work, sells the peril of the scenario and places you right in Sun-Yeong's desperate circumstances. It's a well-made and unexpected piece of horror that's worth seeking out.

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