Jimseung ui kkut

To paraphrase a song sort of. Although I'm pretty sure that most people will have no clue whatsoever about this "animal" referred in the title. I actually almost had forgotten about this movie too. But I remembered it after reading the user comments all too clear (unfortunately).

While it does look and feel artistic, that does not mean you have to like it because it is different. I liked the mood it created at the beginning. But soon the annoying characters took over. Of course you need different kinds of people when you want follow through with a thin story like this. Unfortunately they don't seem that much different. And maybe that's the point (I have no clue what the point is, though I have made my own conclusion).

But for the movie to really completely work, it just drags too much. The pace is just too slow and too many "errors" (not to mention character based choices that do not work motivation-wise) in the script and other mishaps just lessen the enjoyment of the movie. A shame then, but not every movie works for everybody ... Maybe you'll be enticed by the otherworldliness of it all and won't mind the "minor" details along the way (pun intended)

End of Animal is a post-apocalyptic movie like few others. A pregnant woman is in a cab going through a rural landscape to get to her mother's house to deliver her baby. On the way, a blinding white light leaves her (and everyone else) unconscious, and also disables everything electronic. Unfortunately, like the movie's lead character, the director just wanders lost around this setting not knowing where to go with it. Random references to religion and humanity aside, the movie neither offers an explanation for the cause of the event, nor uses the setting in any meaningful way. Scenes just seem to randomly unfold without merit. Showing God (or was it Satan?) in a baseball cap may be an acceptable artistic decision, but him having to physically carry a bicycle out of the way to drive by in a car seems just too limiting for someone who brought about the "End".

End of Animal is certainly the dullest post Apocalyptic film that I've ever seen. An odd mix of art house drama in a decidedly mainstream setting, it is at its heart a genre film but denies us the pleasures that can be derived from being part of this grouping.

Soon-Young, our pregnant protagonist, is traveling to meet her mother when, good natured person that she is, she agrees to share her cab with a mysterious stranger going the same way. This nameless individual seems to know intimate details about both Soon-Young and the cabbie and ominously starts a countdown that ends with a bright flash. When she regains consciousness, Young is alone with only the cab radio working, through which this mysterious man offers her help and advice in order for her to survive the chaos that he predicts. Interesting enough, but the film does almost nothing with this setup. Instead, it turns into something of a stage play, composed of short vignettes where Soon-Young and others she meets on her journey to a nearby rest house, engage in meaningless, banal conversations.

Without any real threat (the films trite point is that human beings pose a danger to themselves in a desperate situation like this) the potential is wasted. Deliberately paced and rather dull, it adds insult by ending on a note of theological/cosmic consequences that, if you are attentive to the dialogs, gives itself away if you think about the obvious parables that the characters represent. For a better art-house, post apocalyptic film, you are better off renting Michael Haneke's bleak yet hopeful Time of the Wolf.

Dark without remit. During most of the film's two hours, dramatic tension in "End of Animal" swings between uncomprehending confusion ("Why is this happening?") and betrayal and victimization ("Why are you doing this to me?") as a very pregnant young woman attempts to reach a highway rest area where she can get word to her mother following a mysterious failure of all electrical devices (well, except for a flashlight or two). Defenseless against the other desperate people she encounters, she lacks coping skills beyond sheer persistence, which nevertheless takes her unexpectedly far in her quest to get home. The erosion of all human help and comfort reminds me of a Japanese film I dimly recall from years ago: "Woman in the Dunes".

Pacing is slow but consistent, and events maintained my interest in the main character and my wish for her to succeed. Supporting characters are economically but believably drawn. The only false note: a nonhuman, recurrent threat is too reminiscent of the American TV series "Lost", which had to be familiar to the makers of this 2010 film.

I cannot tell how they did it, but they succeeded in maintaining the tension for nearly 2 hours. Just like the main characters, we are kept in the dark what is going on exactly, and what the purpose is (if any) of what happens. It is not easy to fit this in any category: it is not Fantasy, not SF, not horror, but anyway the suspense is there and won't leave until the end.

Like everywhere else, several egoistic characters come and go. Some of them just disappear, while others come to a premature death. I cannot see a moral to the story. And what happens to the mother and the baby in the finale, is also not what we should have expected. This is something that I don't like in this film, and there may be a hidden meaning that I missed. Given that, the fact that I don't understand the title of the film, is a very minor issue.