The film by Cho Kyung-hun touches on many important topics, how he reveals this is like a cautionary tale. Right now there are billions of audience whose fascination with Kpop or anything Korean is regarded as a culture, a movement across the globe. But here, the director picks South Korea, the plastic surgery capital of the world and places a obese girl as the central character and how she is a victim/slave to unnatural plastic reconstructions which impacts her socioeconomic standing. It is not preachy but you suddenly realise its shockingly accurate and scathing critique of present day South Korea.
Based on popular Korean thriller webtoon by Oh Seong-dae, this film focusses on Yaeji, a make-up artist working in the fashion industry. She is enormously obese encountering hatefilled people from the industry who make fun of her in the worst way possible. One day, Yaeji receives an anonymous offer to a elixir, after facing so many conflicts within her family and mentally drained, the first success appears. Yaeji looks almost twenty years younger and she is happy that large chunk of extra skin and flab is completely gone. However, it's predictable as anyone can see the disastrous side effects coming as she becomes a walking corpse and looks disgusting which will break everything in her life including her family.
I know many CGI puritans will have a divided opinion if they see this one, yes the animation is sometimes on the amateur side, but it is limited anyway. My favourite is in the last scenes will, the animation was nightmarish and image of a monster with living eyes in the body was the best in this body horror. The art style blends so well, and it reminded me alot of works by Junji Ito and Kev Walker, the man behind Death Metal legend Autopsy's album art for Severed Survival and Mental Funeral.
The central character is partly well-developed and it's not a minus. For a film that doesn't waste time to menace right from the start, it manages to hold it till the finale. Beauty Water is a grotesquely fascinating movie that may be a amateur on the animation side but it is heavy on the efforts and the themes!
