In 2018, the Korean movie "Kunchiyan " became the phenomenon-level horror film of that year. After the
video was released in South Korea, it finally won a box office of 21.4 billion won at a cost of 2.4 billion won.
movie was shortlisted for a number of nominations including the Qinglong Award and the Dazhong Award in the Korean film industry that year, and it was very popular.
For a low-cost thriller without big casts and gorgeous visual effects, the film can be said to be a great success.
"Kun Chiyan" was successful because the film used the form of a pseudo-documentary and used popular online live broadcasts as a gimmick. The timeline of the movie was almost the same as that of real life, allowing the audience to follow the characters in the film and go deep into the terrifying Kun Chiyan Mental Hospital together. The shooting technique of pseudo-documentary filming brings the audience an immersive feeling. With the help of online live broadcasts and desktop movies, it seems that the audience sitting in front of the screen watching the movie is also witnessing this horror live broadcast with their own eyes, so the sense of immersion is doubled.
pseudo-documentary horror films have been around the world for a long time, such as the early " Witch Blair ", to the top-notch "Ghost Records" series, to the Thai horror film " Spiritual Media " produced by the famous Korean director Luo Hongzhen last year, etc.
However, combining pseudo-documentary with online live broadcast and desktop movie formats is not the first creation of "Kun Chiyan".
As early as 2014, a very fierce and bold pseudo-documentary horror film "Life Live " appeared in the Korean film industry. This film is also a pseudo-documentary horror film with the theme of online live broadcast, telling the thrilling incident of three protagonists mistakenly entering a horror hotel in a live broadcast.
film was shortlisted for the midnight unit of the 19th Korean Film Blue Dragon Award, but it was not released in the theater in the end. Therefore, its popularity and influence are less than "Kun Chi Yan" four years later. However, in terms of the vigorousness of the plot and story scale of the film, "Kun Chi Yan" can only be regarded as "a small witch" compared to it.
This issue of " Cult Film Awards ", let's talk about this movie from eight years ago -
"Living Live"
Live TV
video is divided into R 18 in South Korea. On the Korean NAVER website, the reputation of the film is polarized.
People who like it praise the novel theme, fierce plot, and it is indeed scary enough, but critics believe that the director of the film exploited for the sake of exploitation and blindly sold violent scenes, which made some viewers physically uncomfortable after watching it.
On Douban in China, this film does not even have a score, only a dozen short reviews, which can be said to be very unpopular. The two Kim Sun-sung and Sun Kwang-soo in the film
are two second-tier directors in the Korean film industry. Their works are all medium and low-cost commercial films . The actors are slightly more well-known Korean actress Gao Eun-ya . They were originally an advertising model and their representative work is the 2014 drama "Sketch Girl".
As a low-cost independent film, the film was rated as unsuitable for teenagers to watch, so it did not get the opportunity to be released in theaters, but was directly released in South Korea on-demand with streaming VOD.
The story of the movie is summarized in one sentence: The horror incident in the live broadcast room accidentally entered the murder hotel .
The first screen of the video is the computer screen. With the mouse clicking on a live broadcast room on a live broadcast platform, the story officially begins, and the next series of horror incidents happen in this live broadcast room.
In order to create the realism of online live broadcast, the director sometimes deliberately makes the picture into a stuttering effect to enhance the sense of substitution.
The man who appeared in the live broadcast room was named Qinglu . He worked in a nightclub and was also an online anchor.
He announced to the camera that he would go to a nightclub with his lover in the live broadcast room today to flirt with a girl and have a live broadcast of "three-person tour" with them.
It was Christmas, Qinglu and Shanhong came to a nearby bar street, chatting with girls passing by on the way, but they never found a suitable partner.
Finally Shanhong found a young girl drunk and planned to take her into the car. However, the girl found that Qinglu was broadcasting live, cursed at the camera a few times, and left the two.
Qinglu and Shanhong were unwilling to give up and promised to the old men in the live broadcast room that there would be a heroine online tonight.
When the two of them started the live broadcast again, they were already in a car, and there was a young girl named Yeondo. She was a girl who wandered in Seoul and dreamed of becoming a girl group. Qinglu and Shanhong talked about Yeondo and decided to take her to live broadcast.
The three of them first came to a nearby convenience store and bought some props for live broadcasts. Yan Dou, who was bold in style, played with Qinglu and Shanhong in front of the camera, and didn't know that a crisis had begun.
Since it is Christmas and weekend, there are no empty rooms in the nearby hotels, so the three of them had to drive along the road to find the hotel and finally came to a relatively remote motel in the suburbs.
Strangely, the hotel seemed extremely deserted and did not see the boss or the others until they entered the room.
The three of them entered a room and started the live broadcast. In front of the camera, Qinglu and Shanhong began to fight against Yan, but after the matter was finished, the three of them made up again. It turned out that the "performance" just now was actually part of the planned one.
At this time, Qinglu received a call and was about to go downstairs to pick up another female companion Zi Luo. At the same time, Shanhong decided to take a shower, but left her phone in the room, so only Yan Dou was left in the camera.
Yan Dou was about to change his clothes, but the screen was delayed and stuttered. The next second, Yan Dou suddenly disappeared from the screen.
and Shanhong returned to the room after taking a shower, but found that Yan Dou was missing, but there was a pool of blood in the room.
Just at this moment, Qinglu brought his newly arrived female companion Zi Luo into the room. Seeing the blood in the room and Shanhong, who was stained with blood on her body, she was so scared that she panicked.
Qinglu thought Shanhong was too serious and injured Yandou, but Shanhong denied it.
At this moment, the three of them remembered that Yan Dou, who should have been in the room, suddenly disappeared!
The three of them were worried that Yandou would encounter an accident and planned to leave the hotel, but found that all the exits of the hotel were locked. Just when the three of them had no way out, the hotel suddenly had a power outage and the surroundings were dark.
The scared Zi Luo suggested calling the police immediately, but Qinglu was unwilling to give up the popularity of the live broadcast room, so he refused to call the police.
The three had to hold their phones to illuminate them and look for a way out everywhere. As a result, in the darkness, someone attacked Shanhong.
In the darkness, Qinglu and Zi Luo saw a black shadow and cruelly killed Yan Dou.
Only then did they realize that there seemed to be a demon in the hotel hunting them.
But after experiencing such a horrible moment, Qinglu's live broadcast room began to rise, so he looked for a way out in the hotel while holding his mobile phone and not forgetting to broadcast live.
Qinglu and Zi Luo accidentally entered a room, and saw the body of the dead family on the bed in the room. It seemed that the family was preparing to commit suicide by burning charcoal in the room.
Zi Luo found that the little girl seemed to have a breath, so she picked up the little girl and planned to take her out of the hotel with her.
The two brought the little girl to the hotel bath again. In the bath, they saw a sea of corpses and blood, with broken limbs and broken arms everywhere, and blood seemed to fill the pool.
Qinglu and Ziluo, who were in fear, were accidentally separated. Ziluo, who was lonely, was eventually discovered by the murderer and was brutally killed on the spot.
Qinglu's live broadcast room has soared popularity because of this scene. He was originally going to escape and was unwilling to give up the huge traffic in the live broadcast room. Therefore, he refused to ask the police for help. Instead, he took the risk of taking his mobile phone to film the murderer, but naturally he could not escape.
When Qinglu fell to the ground, he still held his phone unwillingly.
In the last live broadcast screen, the murderer found the little girl, but the little girl asked the other party and shouted "Dad", but the father grabbed the little girl's neck and lifted her up. The live broadcast of
ended here. It turned out that the little girl's father was a murderer. He developed an antisocial personality because of his failure in life. Therefore, he came to the hotel to commit suicide. As a result, he turned into a murderer and began to kill in the hotel. The story of the
movie ends here.
From the perspective of the script, the plot of "Living Live" is not complicated. The story is completely a variant of a cult film similar to "The Deadly Bend", but it is better because the director has a new wine in old bottles. Because it combines pseudo-documentary and first-person online live broadcast, the story has a stronger sense of substitution.
Due to limited costs, the plot of the second half of the movie almost always takes place in a hotel. The director sometimes deliberately hides out direct violent scenes. The prisoners do not show their faces from beginning to end, but the killing hidden in the darkness makes people shudder. The protagonists rely on the faint light of their mobile phones to move in the darkness, which adds a layer of claustrophobia to the film.
The first third of the plot of the movie revolves around the live broadcast scenes of Qinglu and Shanhong. In order to attract the popularity of the live broadcast room, the two of them did whatever they could. They not only met up with strange girls on the street, but also found a scene of female companion Yandou playing "violence" in front of the camera. The actor's performance style is also very real, as if they were watching a real live broadcast, and the plot is very offensive.
When Yandou suddenly disappeared, the film began to transition to a horror movie. The form of the pseudo-documentary ensures the "reality" of the plot. At the same time, the movie has many cruel and fierce scenes. The director does not shy away from the use of plasma and creates a thriller atmosphere very successfully.
Unfortunately, the production scale of this film is relatively small, so the whole story is relatively simple, the script is not completed very well, the 86-minute time is actually a bit slow, and the film has no more formal subtitles so far, so I can only watch the entire movie by relying on the computer.
In short, this "Living Live" is recommended for fans of niche and unpopular thrillers and cult movies. If you are friends with a lighter taste in the movie, be careful!
