Dark Market

A South Korean thriller from last year. When a downtrodden renovation manager, Shin Hye-sun, has had enough w/her broken washer & decides to buy a new one, not from a store, but from a reseller, Im Seong-jae, things go from worse to murderous. It turns out Seong-jae is a serial killer w/a particular bent; he targets a victim, kills them & resells their stuff down to the apartment studs but when Hye-sun complains & tracks him down to lay out some real complaints, bringing in a detective, Kim Sung-kyun, to assist as the bodies mount & Seong-jae tries to blackmail Hye-sun into her being left alone. Other than the goofy translated title (don't know the exact translation from Korean) & some lapses in thriller logic, this film is ripe to be remade here in the States where purchases from social media sites have become a cottage industry unto itself. As to the originator, it moves at a clip & some of the set pieces (a car chase through the narrow alleyways of the city is a true edge of the seat draw) are so well done I can't wait to see Michael Bay's overblown retake.

Should you watch this movie as you feel like watching a Korean Movie. Short answer yes. But there's always a but.

As we all know there are crazy people in online, and the best thing to do is to ignore them especially if that person have your information. But fortunately for this buyer who got scammed, decide to triggered the scammer. And paid the price.

It's actually an informative movie teaching you how or what scammer could do with your information. Should you want to try it out yourself or prevent yourself.

I really wanted to praise the movie, but it got so really stupid at the end, that maybe she deserved it all.

A decent Korean thriller that fits the mold of so many similar genre films of late. Home invasion, cybercrime, stalking etc. It doesn't do much to improve the formula, but it will do for a casual watch.

The film minimizes blood and guts, instead playing up the psychological terror that victims suffer from cybercriminals. Our protagonist really does go through considerable distress with hardly any way to protect herself since the elusive villain's methods are scarily effective. He often hides in plain sight, and the screenplay cleverly keeps him hidden until late in the story. Thus we have both a mystery and a stalker thriller that plays its cards straight, with little diversion from the main plot.

It does progress into something more conventional later on, and it might have been more memorable if it strayed from the norm. But we'll have to do with what's presented here, and that's a polished piece of tension building that doesn't do anything to impress, but just about scratches that thriller itch before you move on to something better.

I didn't expect much from the premise of the movie, which is about online shopping, but was pleasantly surprised by the dramatic turn of events that happened.

The movie centers around a woman who is the victim of an online scam but when she tries to expose him she discovers that the scammer is a serial killer.

The cast's performance is pretty good with the main character Soo-hyun played by Hae Sun Shin, who is definitely brilliant when it comes to showing her range through different types of movie genres. I can feel the character's emotions really well through the screen, from anger, annoyance, despair to fear. The detective characters, played by Sungkyun and Tae-oh, did bring some flavours to the table as their presence may lighten the mood.

I find some of the action scenes pretty violent, but effective and memorable as it definitely had me on the edge of my seat especially towards the end.

TLDR; If you don't mind the plot progressing solely due to the incompetence of the main character, the police, and everyone close to the main character and want a thriller about a cyber-stalker, then you should maybe consider this movie.

Starting off with the positives, I think that the thriller side of the movie is done very well. The movie gets intense at times and does well at conveying the stressful moments. This is mostly thanks to the very well acted performance of the mc, but also due to the nicely executed introduction of the villain which made him/her a real unhinged threat. I also liked some of the creative shots in the movie.

Moving on to the negatives, the biggest negative is that everyone in the movie makes the dumbest decisions ever, by either not taking the threat seriously or by sheer incompetence. It's hard to write about this without going into spoilers but I don't think it's hard to imagine what I mean, since this is all too common in this genre. The ending also felt rushed, again it's hard to write about without going into spoilers.