Monday, October 12, 2009

The Quiet Family / Choyonghan kajok (1998)

An enthralling farcical tale about an oddball family which takes on the management of a remote mountain lodge.

Business is slow at first, but picks up, along with the body count. A suicide gets the ball rolling and it gathers speed thanks largely to a combination of ill-fortune and incompetence, topped off by the curse of an old hag.

This film was apparently the base material for The Happiness of the Katakuris, which I have yet to watch. Takeshi Miike apparently added zombies and singing, which sounds a bit like over-seasoning to me.

Ji-woon Kim later directed one of my favourite films of the past decade — A Tale of Two Sisters — from this evidence, not a one-off.

Grade: A-

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