Review of the South Korean horror almanac “Taste of Fear”

This week, the South Korean anthology of short novels “Taste of Fear” (Goedammanchan) is released. Directors Ahn Sang-hoon, Kim Young-gyun, Lim Dae-woong, Chae Yeo-jun and Yoon Eun-kyung gloomily depicted in six short stories not so much mystical as social nightmares that haunt the young and successful residents of a dynamic country. At a glance Mikhail Trofimenkov, The film should be classified as an anti-globalist pamphlet rather than a ghost story.

The characters in the film are doing well, or, at least, they are about to do very well. One schoolgirl will win a dance competition and become a national star a la singer Didi, whose name Korean girls pronounce with aspiration (short story “Dance Challenge”). The other (“Prey”) will receive the highest score on the final exams, and in South Korea, higher education is an object of almost prayerful devotion.

Others have already achieved their desires, but they want more, more, more. The guy lost his winnings at the casino, cherishes the treasured hundred thousand in his bag, but bad luck, he can’t get from the provincial town where he played to Seoul (“Jackpot”). It is raining so much that the taxi driver does not risk continuing the journey and drops off the client at a run-down hotel.

Or (“Gluttony”) a girl known on the Internet under the nickname “Yum-Yum.” She is pretty, and chews elegantly, and a certain “Mr. Boss” regularly drops higher and higher donations on her account. So there’s no way to calm down: he’s fighting with his starving rival “Yura” to see which of them will eat the most of everything possible live on air: from raw fish to cream cakes.

Sometimes heroes become victims of simple whim. If a young man rents an apartment in an “elite” building (“Private Gym”), then he has the right to work out in the gym at any time of the day or night. Although, according to the regulations adopted in the condominium, the lights in the hall are turned off at exactly ten o’clock in the evening.

In short, the authors of the film present us with several of the most popular ways of how in modern South Korea – and not only in it – to achieve good luck, hit the jackpot, and grab fate by the tail. Food blogging, casino gaming, selling girls’ freshness at the dance market and, yes, higher education.

But here’s the rub. Overcoming the last step to prosperity is always hindered either by some circumstances or by some people in your inner circle. And therefore, heroes and heroines have to either resort to the help of otherworldly forces, or run into their disgusting presence in reality.

And then a witch emerges from TikTok, reminiscent of the afterlife creature from the unforgettable “Ring.” Success in exams can be achieved only by making more than one bloody sacrifice of our smaller brothers. Winning a food duel will require abuse of your own body, the details of which are best not described. Ghosts will drive the lucky player into a fiery trap, unaware that winning is synonymous with a death sentence. And as soon as the lights go out in a private gym, unimaginable chaos breaks out.

Of the series of short stories, the only one that stands out is “Rehabilitation”, the meaning of what is happening in which can hardly be deciphered. But she gives the audience, a little tired of zombies with heads rotating at three hundred and sixty degrees, the best visual effect of the film: a rain of white mice falling on the heroine in some mysterious laboratory.

In general, the moral of the film is simple. Don’t look, dear children, for easy ways to success. Don’t play in casinos, don’t surf the Internet. Better yet, even if it’s not said on the screen, go work in a factory, post office, railroad, and the like. Of course, there are chances that the ghosts will catch up with you there, but they are small. And everything else is running in place to your own death. This metaphor is literally embodied in two short stories, “Private Gym” and “Rehabilitation”.