Body Parts
Hwang Jae-pil outside in the darkened back alley, communicating with Yoo Si-kyung over a concealed earpiece from the relative safety of his car, it is she who is taking the risk, a young journalist who has infiltrated what appears to be a cult which supposedly takes advantage of its devotees, the robed acolytes having their faces painted before praying and chanting, making offerings to “Mother” in order to be allowed audience with “Father,” hidden behind curtains, who may grant them their darkest needs.
A Korean horror anthology film directed by Won-kyung Choi, Byeong-deock Jeon, Jisam, Jang-mi Kim, Gwang-Jin Lee and Wally Seo, Pieces is the frame which holds the Body Parts together, with Kim Chae-eun as the inside woman, a camera concealed in her bag, and Jung Joon-won as her controller, barking orders and offering hollow reassurance to the girl he uses as a tool to get inside when he has no idea what she is witnessing.
The five segments comprising The Reek, The Boy Who Sees Ghosts, exorcism.net, A Former Resident and String, and leaping straight into mutilation seemingly for the sake of it, the problem is that the frame is told from the point of view of Si-kyung, each story leading to the presentation of one of the offerings, something which was taken now given to Father, a slowly assembled whole in which she is trapped but with no way she can be aware of the details to which the viewer is now privy, any sense of urgency and danger askew.
The Reek and The Boy Who Sees Ghosts both presuming an immediate acceptance of hauntings and cursed bottles of expensive perfume and populated with selfish and cruel youths whose sole purpose is to hurt others, they are perfunctory and carry little weight, though the second manages to become uncanny as it moves to the candlelit rituals, while exorcism.net benefits from the intensity of the performances but still rings hollow, the sound and fury which fill it signifying nothing beyond the superficial shock of the obvious.
The most atmospheric, A Former Resident sees a young woman disturbed in her new apartment by the older woman who used to occupy it, warning her to take precautions, but what might be achieved given wider space to breathe and unfold is rushed, while String presents the kind of single idea preposterous peril of two strangers bound by steel cable around their necks which often forms the basis for an entire feature, mercifully playing out to its inevitably uncooperative conclusion in only a few minutes of confrontation and contortion.
Visually and tonally consistent despite the different writers and directors for each segment, Body Parts is middling when it hopes to be shocking, overfamiliar images tossed out without the context to give them power, having given little reason to care for the characters other than Si-kyung whose role as a helpless observer is still frustrating, and with the cult itself potentially the most interesting aspect, the underlying question of what drives people to obsessive belief wanting deeper exploration, the whole feels less than the sum of the boxed pieces.
Body Parts will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 6th June
