The Chaser (2008)

Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser is one gritty, nasty piece of filmmaking. And I mean that as a good thing. This is a crime film where violence is glamorized or sanitized; where life and death hurts; and where the concept of “good guys” is totally ignored. It’s not the first film to take this stance, and it’s not the only one that can make these claims, but Jesus Christ, it’s pretty fucking brutal.


The story goes something like this: Joong-ho (Kim Yoon-seok) is a pimp. He’s the hero of the story. Two of his prostitutes have gone missing. First, he thinks they’ve run off: he’s “the chaser” of the title, looking for his women. Joong-ho is a former cop, but this almost seems like a detail added just to make sure that there’s something about him that the audience can identify with. In one of the few instances of him doing detective work, Joong-ho discovers that his two missing gals both had the same last client, who turns out to be Yeong-min (Ha Jeong-woo). Joong-ho assumes that Yeong-min has sold his women out from under him, and wants vengeance. After realizing that a third prostitute, Mi-jin, is currently with Yeong-min, Joong-ho calls her and convinces her to go the guy’s house (they only have his cell number), excuse herself to go to the washroom, and to call him and tell him the address. Mi-jin reluctantly agrees, only to be captured by Yeong-min, who isn’t a flesh-peddler but a total fucking psychopath. What follows is one of the more horrific scenes I’ve witnessed on film.

And then things take a strange turn; strange, that is, considering the genre. Because, by about 30 minutes into the film, Joong-ho catches Yeong-min, and they both end up in police custody. With only a quarter of the movie finished, the killer has been captured. Better still, he even admits to his crimes. Except that he provides them with no evidence, and they’ve already arrested someone for earlier crimes which Yeong-min is now claiming to have committed. Added to these problems is the fact that, in apprehending Yeong-min, Joong-ho beat the ever-loving shit out of him, and now it looks like the cops are brutalizing some poor, innocent man just to pin some serious crimes on him.


So, due to a mixture of police incompetence, and some bizarre police rules and procedures that, for all I know, are actually real, Joong-ho only has 12 hours to find Mi-jin--that is, if she’s still alive. To be sure, his interest isn’t out of sympathy for her situation; rather, Mi-jin is his property, and this pimp wants his fucking money.

The Chaser is actually based on a real case. Yoo Young-cheol killed his victims in similar fashion, and (to some extent) pimps were involved in actually bringing him to justice. Over the course of Young-cheol’s crime spree, he has apprehended by police more than once, generally on different charges, and ended up getting away, so I assume that the difficulties that the police have in The Chaser are a condensed version of these problems.
(Read about the real case here)


The Chaser is quite remarkable, in it’s grim outlook and gritty aesthetic. The narrative has the affect of making its protagonist, no matter how reprehensible, into a sympathetic character, and so you actually have to look past your naturally-occurring connection to Joong-ho to realize what an utter piece of shit he is. Certainly it’s easy to empathize with him over Yeong-min, who is such a crazy weirdo that he’s almost alien. Yeong-min isn’t a Hannibal Lecter-style murderer, who is as brilliant as he is maniacal, or even a stoic badass; rather, he’s a pathetic, insignificant fuck who gets his rocks off killing women, and only gets away with it due to police incompetence.

Rumour has it that The Chaser is being remade in America, probably sometime next year (2010). I have a hard time believing that the bleak outlook of the original will remain. I don’t know if the general movie-going audience will be able to swallow a movie with such an unremittingly dreary aesthetic and emotional view of humanity, where your only choice is between sleazy and psychotic.

Bloody Nightmares #5: Serial Killer (2002)

A few years before Demon Slaughter, Director Ryan Cavalline put together a much more serious take on the horror genre in Serial Killer. More of a meditation on the mind of a murderer than a straight stalk and slash type of movie, Cavelline nonetheless packs the film with naked ladies and a few familiar faces to Z-grade horror fans.

The film spends much of its running time cutting between Michael (Adam Berasi, also the lead in Demon Slaughter), a professional writer who has begun to receive violent videotapes after publishing a book on serial killers, as wel as the exploits of an unamed serial killer (Vic Badger) who has apparently captured Michael's wife and child. Also interspersed throughout are filmed testimonials from actors portraying serial killers, including low-budget legend Joel D. Wynkoop, as well as terrified statements from the serial killers (naked and tied up) victims. And guess what? There's a twist at the end! Try your best not to guess it in the first ten minutes.

At times Serial Killer is quite an unpleasant movie to watch, but unlike Nightmare Asylum this time it's actually intentional. The serial killers speaking to the camera, while sometimes unconvincing, provide some powerful and disturbing moments that, frankly, give the film more power than it deserves. The main plot leaves much to be desired, and while the serial killer scenes have some strong elements, it's a bit too grim and humourless to be entertaining. And while I appreciated the bevy of naked adult entertainers on display, their frequency began to feel more and more exploitive as the film went on, particularly when they detail their respective sexual assaults.

But despite my objections to some of the content, Cavelline was smart to edit these scenes in to break up some of the monotony of Michael's brooding. He spend much of the film drinking and looking dour which quickly starts to become tiring. It's also interesting that graphic violence is mostly avoided, at least until the end, which was a surprise after the goopy excess of Demon Slaughter.

I praised Adam Berasi's performance in Demon Slaughter, but here he's really quite unconvincing as a tormented writer. Much better is Vic Badger who hammed it up as Satan in Demon Slaughter, but his unhinged act works much better here. The serial killers on the interview tapes (which include producer Ron Bonk and z-horror mainstay Ron Ford) do their job efficiently, but it's Wynkoop who is most memorably creepy.

While it uses only a few locations, the technical aspects of the film are respectable. Aside from an ill chosen rock song during a cemetary scene, the music is very well done. Dialogue is usually intelligible, and the special FX are all tolerable, though again sometimes hurt by poor editing.

Though it's only a small detail, there was one particular moment of the film that felt quite careless. I was irked by Michael writing "Your Dead" on a note for an autograph seeking visitor. It's difficult to believe that a professional writer would make such a slip on Your/You're, and it's almost equally hard to believe that it ended up in the finished film without someone noticing.

Serial Killer is presented in a decent fullscreen transfer free of some of the pixelation issues that plague other films in the Bloody Nightmares collection. Luckily there are none of the sound issues which made Demon Slaughter so difficult to sit through.

A decent stab (ha!) at a difficult genre, Ryan Cavalline deserves credit for trying something a little different in Serial Killer, though he fails as often as he succeeds. Hampered by some bad performances and an uneven story, there are still enough effective and creepy moments throughout to make it a worthwhile watch. However, a bit more care with the production side of things could have resulted in a much stronger film.