Disappearances and sinister secrets in an all-girl boarding school in 1930s Korea…
The setup for The Silenced certainly sounds familiar, revolving around a newcomer investigating mysterious disappearances and strange goings-on an a all-girl boarding school, conjuring visions of the Whispering Corridors franchise and a hundred other conventional modern Korean ghost films. Thankfully, the third feature from writer director Lee Hae-yeong does at least in part go down a different route, showing some of the inventiveness and defiance of conventions that characterised his award-winning 2006 debut Like a Virgin and his 2010 follow-up Foxy Festival. Unusually for this kind of genre mystery, the film had a strong showing at awards ceremonies, winning a number of nominations and prizes at the Grand Bell and Blue Dragon Awards in Korea.
Set in 1938 in Japan-occupied Korea, the film stars Park Bo-young (A Werewolf Boy) as Joo Ran, a young woman from a rich family suffering from a debilitating health condition, who is sent to a remote rural school in order to recuperate. Although she begins to feel stronger after settling in at the school, thanks in part to her new friendship with classmate friend Yeon Deok (Park So-dam, Steel Cold Winter), she soon starts to realise that something is not quite right, with several girls having gone missing of late, including one who strangely enough has the same name as her. Suffering from terrifying hallucinations and suspecting that the headmistress (Uhm Ji-won, Foxy Festival) may have something to do with the disappearances, Joo Ran starts an investigation, leading her to uncover a series of dark secrets.
The Silenced starts off treading a very worn path and very much in the manner of a traditional Korean ghost film, with an instantly recognisable school setting and young female cast, the usual mysteries and creepy visions, along with themes of bullying and isolation. Thankfully, although it does stick to this for most of the running time in terms of its structure, the film is a quietly impressive example of good storytelling, Lee Hae-yeong hitting all the right beats and subtly invoking slow-burn tension, using the Japanese colonial time period for an air of oppression and mistrust. Though the journey is familiar almost to a fault, the film does have a pleasingly different resolution, and while some may well see the last act twists coming thanks to some fairly obvious clues early on, there are a few welcome surprises en route to its satisfying conclusion.
Lee is clearly aiming for atmospheric chills rather than cheap frights, and the film performs well in this regard, feeling doom-laden and eerie throughout its efficiently short running time. There are a few scares thrown in here and there, and while none of these are particularly creative, they do provide the jolts required to maintain a sense of threat. Some great production values really help in this regard, and the film is a handsomely made affair, Lee doing a great job of shooting the local countryside and the ominously grand school for maximum disquieting effect. Special mention should also go to some very accomplished and unnerving use of lighting, for which Kim Min Jae deservedly won for a Grand Bell award for, and which gives the film’s locations a wonderfully understated gothic and shadowy look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_14SuIO3diw
Although the film can be a little confusing in places due to its character all wearing the exact same clothes and having very similar hairstyles, deliberately so, uniformity being a key theme, the cast are generally impressive, Park Bo-young showing more range than in the far more melodramatic A Werewolf Boy and making Joo Ran an engaging, if generic protagonist. Uhm Ji-won also does well and adds pathos to her ambiguous role, as does Park So Dan, who won Best New Actress at Busan Film Critics’ Awards and was nominated at the Grand Bell Awards for performance.
Despite never really offering anything really new, The Silenced is nevertheless a very enjoyable piece of genre filmmaking, and another interesting offering from Lee Hae-yeong. While not at the level of the classic A Tale of Two Sisters, it’s definitely one of the better films of its type from Korea in recent times, and even those understandably tired of the form should enjoy its well-judged menace.
I appreciated your review, and would like to ask about my confusion re. characters. Park Bo-young plays the protagonist, Joo Ran; but this is the name she uses with Jeon Deok (their names used by close friends?) not the name she shares with her namesake, Shizuko! To add to this difficulty in keeping track of who’s who in this cast of young Asians, the original “Shizuko” looks, to me, just like the current one (and yet, the cast list tells me she was played by a different actress).
As for the movie, more in general, I too enjoyed its variations on the “horror” genre. And as for the jump cuts to different scenes with one or the other Shizuko. This sliding time frame put me in a position to be thinking about the potential for life being shared with others who may even have lived in a different time. I suspect this thought may have helped me accept the last scene which seem could be seen taking place in a number of different realities: whether it be cognizant, spiritual, or something else. Confusing, yes, but not in a way disaffecting for some viewers.