Gyeongseonghakyoo: Sarajin sonyeodeul

It isnt a good movie or bad movie. I thought it would be horror but it really just thriller and mystery the acting was good especially at the end of movie. And its kinda boring.

The Silenced is by no means your ordinary supernatural film featuring teenage students in a school of Victorian setting. Sure, it has the elements above featured in the film. But Director Lee Hae-young bravely mixed and revolutionized them into a horror tale of colonialism. Sadly though, it never reached its potential to stand out and will leave the audience divisive.

Set in 1938 during the Japanese occupation in Korea, a sick young girl named Ju-ran/Shizuko (Park Bo-young) is transferred into a girls' boarding school that is disguised as a sanitorium to recover her health. Through its tame opening, there's an eerie and creepy atmosphere as we follow Ju-ran entering the boarding school. When Ju-ran arrives, the film successfully distinguishes itself from typical boarding school horror films. All of these kids look fine. There's no signs of supernatural being in the school. But the chills that I got tell my senses that something's wrong and glued my eyes to the screen.

As Ju-ran settled, the film seems more straight to a slow drama where she bonds with her new friend Yeon-deok (Park So-dam) and tries to adapt to her new environment. However, Lee Hae-young smartly inserts some disturbing moments and behaviors from Ju-ran surroundings that reminding us this is still a horror film. Those moments are greatly balanced with the drama of Ju-ran and Yeon-deok's bonding and made the first act a pleasant time to watch.

Slowly, however, Ju-ran started to sense something is wrong with the school from her friends and teachers as well as her treatment. I really appreciate how Hae-young decided to not approach the films with typical jump scares, but rather, with slow-burning atmosphere building to terrorize the audience. This is achieved through most of the supporting cast performances that make the audience experience spine-chills and how the abnormal moments are inserted in unexpected places. Unfortunately, these potentials are never achieved as the film second-act being too slow, dwindling anywhere without moving the story forward added with its beautiful yet misplaced music cues that lose the film tension.

Still, even when the story didn't move forward, the character did develop and there's still an emotional attachment that audience could relate to. I personally love on how Ju-ran changes not only from her health but socially as she became braver to interact with others and her speech being more fluent. Park Bo-young, who's performance is popular from A Werewolf Boy (2012), shows more range of talent in this film. The breakthrough are from Park So-dam though, who already attracts me from its charming aura yet a cool demeanor that is so similar from Parasite (2019). Praise also needs to be given to the production team and cinematographer Kim Il-Yeon that beautifully captures the visuals, making the film bearable to watch even with its flaws.

The audience might be divided on how the mystery was resolved. As I mentioned several times above, this is by no means a typical Victorian horror. There's a social context mix with a history of colonialism that truly creates a horrifying moment for those who could relate. However, for those that don't, the revelation could be off-putting and the third act could appear to be ridiculous and over-the-top. Personally, I did felt the latter but I can't deny that I enjoy it and still have sympathy for all of the characters thanks to its strong development in scriptwriting.

The film is a mix-bag. However, if you're bored watching typical horror films and try to find a slow-burning terror with great characters and cinematography, then The Silenced might be a recommended choice for you.

It was perhaps a good film, but its style was a bit confusing. Individual scenes were suddenly cut off for no apparent reason, with the missing part shown much later in flash-back.

And unless you have a lot of friends or acquaintances that are oriental you might have trouble keeping track of the characters. (The old "they all look alike" cliché.)

For an OWM (old white male) like me, it especially didn't help that not only did most of the characters look very similar, they all wore identical clothing. The scenes that were fast paced didn't give me enough time to figure out who is who.

Just to make it worse, each character had two different names (their real name and their school name), and to top it off, one of the names was used for two different characters.

Being able to recognize the difference between Korean and Japanese might help too.

I suspect I'd like it better if I watched it a second time.

I didn't quite know what to expect when I watched this film. I tried to find out about it without revealing keep key plot points and had the feeling it was something along horror baseline but nothing supernatural, so I decided to give it a go. It was on Netflix but it did not advise until I looked on here that it was in Japanese with English subtitles but I'm happy to give that a go as long as the film is good. Within 5–10 minutes of the film starting, I'd forgotten I was watching it with subtitles so please don't let that rubbish you from watching this film.

The story line was good, the acting was good and it had me gripped right up until the last 20 minutes or so. At that point I realized where the story was going I was a little disappointed with the ending as I thought it was going to be something different. It felt a bit like they weren't quite sure where they were going with the story and it felt like a lot of things weren't cleared up which for me, is something I like in a film. I like a definite ending without the ambiguity that leaves you wondering what went on and leaves you scouring Google to work out what happened. So for me the ending of this film wasn't great.

That being said everything up until the last 20 minutes was really good and very captivating, I really enjoyed structure, the scenery, the setting and backdrop of the film and the skill of the actors. It's just a shame that towards the end, all of the suspense and story they had built in the film seemed to be crammed into messy, unbelievable ending that crescendoed as quickly as it started.

I would say it's worth a go but maybe go into this with an open mind about the ending because to me, it's not the sort of ending I would look for in a well structured horror film.

The plot is indeed a bit all over the place, especially in the second half, but I loved the movie nonetheless. The acting was very convincing and I felt very sympathetic to the girls. While not strictly a horror movie, this is a must see.