Let Me Out: Trips and Treats Alike in Student Zombie Film

Watching Kim Chang-lae's and Soh Jae's zombie pic Let Me Out is a very meta experience. A film about making a (student) film, the movie often satirizes production issues with which it's unquestionably, sometimes painfully, burdened. And so, while Let Me Out might be poking fun at an untalented, attractive lead actress, that role is played by an untalented, attractive lead actress. And while some on-screen performers may complain about a script that doesn't coalesce, audience members sitting near you are also likely to whisper the same thing. Can't decide whether slow zombies or fast zombies are truer to the genre? Neither can Let Me Out. Not that Let Me Out is trying to be scary. It's trying to be funny. And more than occasionally, it succeeds.

Most of the laughs come from the zombies: three hammy, upbeat actors who radiate optimism as they indulge in the good fortune that comes with sponsored whiskey, free lunches and a chance to be immortalized in celluloid. None of them is particularly convincing as a member of the ravenous undead but whenever this trio is in makeup but out of character, the movie proves charmingly fun. And it's not just the absurdity of watching zombies eat, drink and eventually take over the duties of the crew that cracked me up. It's that each of the actors is so consistently able to project a disarmingly sweet nature while looking like a vivified corpse. That's a stark contrast to the lifeless performance given by Kwon Hyun-sang as the exasperatingly unlikable student director who feels fake right down to his lens-less eyeglasses. I would've liked to have seen what co-star Han Geun-sup would've done with that role.

Star sightings: Pay attention, Korean movie buffs: Directors Lee Myung-se (M, Nowhere to Hide) and Yang Ik-joon (Breathless) have cameos.

Nowhere to Hide: Look at the Crime; Don't Attend to the Crime

Nowhere to Hide certainly looks good. It's got a grainy black-and-white prelude in which one high-energy police bust periodically freeze frames into Crayola-colored stills. It's got slow, arhythmic pans that slide across glass surfaces reflecting autumn leaves, street lights and garish neon. It's got one extended fight sequence shot in silhouette so that it looks like cool shadow puppetry. All of this is good. It's also got a villain (Ahn Sung-kee) who despite being a murderer doesn't seem to justify the extensive manhunt. It's got a main cop (Park Joong-hoon, a kind of poor man's Song Kang-ho) who's technique is limited to swagger, smile and run. The detective has an ineffective sidekick (Jang Dong-kun); the bad guy, a teary-eyed girlfriend (Choi Ji-woo). All of this is bad. Does it balance out in the end? I'd say Nowhere to Hide is the perfect party video; director Lee Myung-se's movie is the type you want playing on a wall at a nightclub or a rave, its periodically flashy visuals acting as conversation-starters and boredom-preventers. Minus the dialogue (and there isn't much, frankly), Nowhere to Hide is fit to be seen and danced to.

M: Not Letter Perfect Symbolism

In Lee Myung-se's mindnumbing melodrama M, maudlin muse and memory-figment Mimi (Lee Yeon-hee) mentions meditatively that she's mad for things starting with M. She loves Mozart, Modigliani, and more to the point Min-woo (Kang Dong-won), a momentarily manic memoirist made miserable by a millstone that's either money-related or a premarital misgiving. Maybe mostly it's the man's miserable case of writer's block. Whatever the mundane matter, Min-woo is majorly mixed up: See how he moons over the mercurial mystery woman; watch as he demeans his milksop/helpmeet/roomie (Kong Hyo-jin), imminent marriage be damned. (As to his book, it's a mawkish mess.) What to make of this murky material... M may mean a mystifying, metaphorical memory of Mimi or a morbid mental case in a midlife crisis! Most likely, M means high-minded masturbation. As moviemaking goes, M is Lee's meandering manifesto for maximalism with all the methods misapplied; the montages are technically masterful yet mildly meaningful. If Lee meant to make an imagist marvel with M, he missed by a mile.

Bitter and Sweet: The Aftertaste of Fluorescent Lights

Film students sweating over an overdue term paper on appropriation should consider Bitter and Sweet the answer to their prayers. A prismatic comedy about office drones (Ahn Sung-kee, Choi Jong-won, Park Sang-min, Song Young-chang) who escape bleak reality via rebellious fantasies, Lee Myung-se's workplace satire overflows with easily identifiable references to Chaplin, The Three Stooges, Dr. Seuss, Singin' in the Rain, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty... The list goes on and on. It's not hard to imagine some happy undergraduate madly scribbling or typing all the ideas flooding his or her mind. Those not working on a thesis, however, will be less excited. Although intermittently amusing (a giggle, a chuckle, no laughs), Bitter and Sweet is more often overemphatic and under-rehearsed. There's nothing sublime about Lee's social critique and the acting is so unpolished you get the feeling that every scene was done in one shot with actors being handed scripts seconds before the clapper snapped and the director screamed "Action!" Visually, you'll see flashes of Hitchock, Minnelli, Tati, etc. What you won't see is something as lively as its source materials.