Monday, April 21, 2025

Streaming - A Thriller with Interesting Idea but Lacking a Bit in Execution

Few days ago, this intriguing South Korean movie was released in only one cinema chain in Indonesia. Fortunately for me and my wife, it played at a convenient time in the studio located not that far from our home. So without hesitation, we went to the cinema yesterday and finished the film around lunch time. OK, why don't I get to it now.

Brief Story Line

Woo-sang (Kang Ha-neul - Love Reset, Squid Game season 2 etc) was the number one streamer in a fictional South Korean streaming service called WAG. His contents was analyzing crimes including the latest series of murders by someone referred to as Hemline serial killer. In order to get even more subscribers, Woo-sang collaborated with newcomer Matilda (Ha Seo-yoon - Family By Choice TV series etc).

However, things gotten bad for him due to some controversy during one of his stream. And in order to reclaim his popularity, Woo-sang tried to capture the Hemline murder while doing live streaming.

So what would happen to him? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Like I said above, the plot of this film was intriguing for me and the reason I wanted to give it a try. Meanwhile my wife was interested since the main actor is pretty famous and she had seen many of his dramas and movies in the past. The opening scene was pretty well done as it was easily understood and we were able to grasp the reason people so intent on becoming the number one streamer. Subsequently the film was shown from the point of view of Woo-sang when he was doing live streaming. This included brief breaks during the show and short advertisement in between, plus some audience comments that provided realistic feeling of watching live event. 

As the movie progressed though, the mystery did not feel to be explored in detail since the story seemed to be heading in a different direction. During this time, my wife and I were busy trying to guess who the actual killer was and funnily enough, we could only deduce it much later. There was another twist before the big reveal which was disappointing for me personally as I was late in realizing it, but my wife was able to guess way earlier. The ending though was not exactly great as it seemed to be purposely left open for audience to think. Both of us also felt something clearly missing, i.e the existence of law enforcement which we thought was very unlikely. 

For a movie that was told almost entirely from the point of view of live streamer, this one was not bad but not exactly that great either. There were few flashes of brilliance especially the performance of Kang Ha-neul who was able to change expressions swiftly from cool, annoyed, intense, angry and even proud of himself (when he managed to guess something right one time). The consistency of using hand held camera as though doing live streaming was also pretty good. The director and writer Cho Jang-ho did a pretty decent job in his directorial debut and likely with time he could do even better. Btw, the movie was released in South Korea last month but did not seem to be a big success.

The film itself had very small cast. Aside from Kang Ha-neul and Ha Seo-yoon, there were only few others like Ha-kyung as Lee Jin-sung, Ryu Young-suk as the cameraman and two or three more in minor roles. It had short duration of 91 minutes which included closing credits but no mid or post end credit scene. Overall this one did have some entertaining value but it lacked the real thrill for me and felt like a very light version of the critical and commercial hit Searching or its sequel Missing. So if you just want to see Kang Ha-neul did a one-man show of portraying streamer while trying to solve a case, then you could give this a try. As long as you manage your expectation, then you should be fine.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars 

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