Chaw (non-spoiler) Review

I am back to reviews after a week off (sorry about that, last week was a little too busy and I didn’t plan ahead well). As I hinted towards in my Creature Features post, today I am reviewing the 2009 dark comedy monster film, Chaw.

Chaw’s premise is super simple: a mutant pig terrorizes a small rural town that has seen no deaths in years, and a ragtag team is formed to stop it. Director/writer Shin Jeong Won stated in an interview that he came up with the idea to do the movie when he kept getting comedic scripts that didn’t match his comedy. He wanted to do a monster movie and was “intrigued by the idea of a familiar animal attacking and killing humans and wanted to create something out of this unexpectedness. But most of all, I wanted something funny and unique.” He picked a boar because it’s the most well known animal that creates the greatest amount of destruction. (source 1) (source 2).

Apparently, Shin and I would get along great, because I loved how the comedy was used in this film (and probably would have hated all those comedy scripts he was sent). For the most part, when we deal with the boar and its destruction, the comedy isn’t used or played up which allows a lot of the satire to lie in the quirkiness of the town and the characters outside of incidents with the boar. The comedy really just helps to form the backdrop of the town and the characters to give you a sense of who they are and why they are responding the way they are. Seriously, I’d watch a drama of just this town and all the people in it. I read someone comparing it to Twin Peaks, and I’d have to agree. If you combined Twin Peaks with The Host, you’d get Chaw if that helps you figure out what type of movie you’re getting yourself into.

The boar was a mixture of animatronic and CGI. As a lover of practicals, I really liked it a lot. The pig was created by an FX team in the US and it took three years to create along with all of the stuntmen and costumes. All the work paid off, as it works well and really helps some of the major scenes that the actors are with the creature in the same room and interacting with it. There is a bigger fight scene towards the middle where the CGI and animatronic was used, it integrates pretty nicely within the scene and doesn’t take away from what’s going on.

I think what also helped the movie to not feel too cheesy was that the design of the boar leans more to a realistic copy of a boar and focuses the scare more on it being a real life problem as opposed to trying to make it some weird hybrid sci-fi creature that looks unknown. They describe it as a mutant, but really it’s just a larger boar…that poses a much higher death count. I felt that it also helped keep the comedy’s focus on the characters, as there wasn’t a time you were supposed to find the boar a weirdly funny creature and helped it feel much more like an actual boar, which was essential for some of the later scenes.

I really suggest checking out Chaw if you have the chance. I don’t think it’s talked about a lot, mainly because it probably gets overshadowed by The Host and just the general lack of monster films coming out of South Korea. It’s fun, aware of its campiness, and integrates it well so that it doesn’t over saturate it. The characters are equally as fun and quirky and the main team works well together and are perfectly incompetent. They are a great found family with heart.

Chaw is currently streaming for free on Tubi with ads.

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The 8th Night (non-spoiler) Review

Did I hate The 8th Night? No. Did I love it? Also no.

The 8th Night is the story of Park Jin Soo (Lee Sung Min), a former monk who has been summoned to help rid the world of a centuries-old demon that has been reawakened. He is joined by a monk Cheong Seouk, played by Nam Da Reum.

I’m having a hard time trying to review this movie because while I didn’t think it was a bad movie, and could see how a lot of people would connect, I didn’t find it really that memorable. 8th Night is weird in that the first quarter of the movie is set up more like an adventure action movie, as the artifact is found and the monks tell the stories voiced over graphics. It doesn’t give you a sense of where the movie is going, or even where it’s trying to go. I was left in this weird state of confusion because we really weren’t doing much of anything.

Not only does the story take a while to actually progress, it also takes a while for it to be scary. And by a while - save a few instances of weird faces - the only horror you get out of the movie is in the last 20 minutes. With not much build-up or tension, the movie falls flat as a horror. Trailers are a notoriously terrible judge on what the movie is going to be, and this movie was no exception. There is no tension during the first hour or so because most of it is unnecessary, drawn-out plot. It spends most of its time focusing on the stories, but doesn’t really need any of that exposition to understand what is going on or even take the story to where it needed to go. It’s the movie’s major flaw.

Don’t go into it thinking the movie you are seeing in the previews is the movie you receive. I wanted a bit more intrigue and better pacing, and a lot more horror than was presented in the movie. The fact that most of those things only appeared in about the last 20 minutes of a two-hour movie was too much work for not a lot of payoff. In the end, it fell flat and uninteresting. I was really hoping for a lot more than this.

If you have a free two hours, or like backstory-heavy slow exorcism movies watch this, but I’d skip it if I didn’t have the free time.

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Korean Creature Features

I have a true love for creature features, they are fun and just make me happy. My love prompted me to go on a search for some Korean offerings and while there aren’t many Korean ones, so I thought I’d share with you a handful. I haven’t watched all of the below list, but they were the ones that I personally was most interested in. Let me know in the comments below if you know any more that I should add to the list (not just Korean, from anywhere - I’ll take notes for later).

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The Host - 괴물 (2006)

Starting the list off with, in my opinion, the best option, The Host has probably everything you can possibly want. A fun creature, a goofy dad just trying his best to save his daughter, and Bae Doona. Seriously, if you haven’t watched this yet, push it up the list. Currently streaming on Hulu, but it’s good enough to own on Blu-Ray if you don’t have access.

Chaw - 차우 (2009)

You’ll probably hear more about this soon (hint, hint), but this 2009 movie has a man-eating boar. What more could you possibly want? Nothing, I say. Nothing.

Monstrum - 물괴 (2018)

I’ve talked briefly about this one in my Current Korean Horror on Shudder post. It’s set in the Joseon era, where a monster emerges. I probably won’t get to this one for a while, but just the fact that there is a plague happening and the result is not a zombie outbreak gets me excited. I love you zombie movies, but I love weird creatures so much more.

Yonggary - 용가리

If Godzilla-like monsters are more your speed, Yonggary might be the answer. It’s also sort of the oddball of the grouping, as even though it is a Korean production, the main cast is made up of American actors. And it’s on Tubi!

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#Alive (Non-Spoiler) Review

So zombie movies aren’t something I always gravitate towards. Not because I hate them or that they freak me out. It’s just that I feel overwhelmed with them because the zombie subgenre is just so…overpopulated with them. Especially now, it just feels like if there is some sort of monster-type entity it’s going to be some variation of a zombie. And as a creature-feature lover, I’m always hoping that the big bad is going to be something other than just zombies. I get it, it’s something that’s super easy to grasp (especially now), and it can create more of a connection than some other monster. So last year when Netflix announced that they would be picking up the movie #Alive, I was excited that it would be accessible and easy to watch, I just wasn’t so excited for it that I had to watch it exactly when it dropped. That is why we’re here, almost a year later, finally watching it. And I wish I hadn’t waited.

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#Alive follows Oh Joon Woo (portrayed by Yoo Ah In) who wakes up one day while his family is on vacation to a zombie outbreak. Joon Woo, trapped in an apartment without much food and water, has to figure out how to survive alone. One day, he meets another survivor (Park Shin Hye) in the apartment across the street from his.

For a zombie movie, the movie largely spends most of its time not really focusing on the zombies. I mean, it kinda does. They are always present, but they aren’t the real focus. The movie was much more of a survival horror film that had a zombie outbreak, than an action zombie film. From despair, hopelessness, and dwindling resources, survival lies in continuing on when all is lost more than the fear of the zombies. Between the real stages of grief that the characters go through, and the real-life survival problems that arise during, I found it a lot more enjoyable and different than other zombie films I’ve seen.

You probably know by now that I kind of have a thing for the silence. I love the mundane slices of life. This usually translates into liking things that most people find boring and I do think that this movie might have that problem with some of the audience that watches it. There’s real loneliness for a good chunk, and most of the time it’s just Joon Woo in the apartment. Park Shin Hye’s character doesn’t even enter until over thirty minutes in. He doesn’t fight a lot of zombies, most of the time we only see them below from the window of his apartment. For me, this is what worked. I liked that it focused more on the reality of a zombie outbreak. Probably due to the world we’re currently in, I felt more of a connection to what the character was doing and the real horror living in the despair of the unknown more than anything else. I liked that they showed him being concerned for his family, the little notes he left around to keep up his spirits. The video diaries he did, and the passing of time doing the things he loved like playing video games. It felt more real, and was easier to connect with.

I wanted to keep this movie review spoiler-free, so I can’t really go into detail about some of my other favorite parts of the movie, but I do want to make note of the way that they bridged current day technology with what is going on and how it plays in the greater plot of the movie. It added even more to my enjoyment and more to the real horror. I don’t think they overused aspects of technology that would make it seem unreal. Cell phones were losing signal in and out. One scene we see him desperately trying to find bars just to listen to his parent’s voice mail. There were references to breaks for commercials during the news updates, and random news segments that were more light-hearted that added this light surreal touch that coming off of the year we had is absolutely true. In the beginning, we see him on social media basically pleading the will to go on because he was so lonely and wanted to connect with someone. Instead of the technology being an aid in fighting the zombies, it was focused more on the connection it provided.

If you haven’t watched the movie yet, I would definitely recommend it. While there is a bit of gore when the zombies are feeding, and a few other points, it’s not super gratuitous and a lot lighter in the amount that it happens. If you aren’t into zombie movies because they cause stress, I still wouldn’t recommend it. I think if you spend your time hyper-focused on the zombies and what they are doing (or what they will potentially do) it would be such a disservice to the rest of the movie and focus you in the wrong direction and I don’t think you’d get the same out of it.

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A Tale of Two Sisters Review

This week’s Friday night movie pick was the 2003 classic, A Tale of Two Sisters.

I actually first watched the movie last year because I had found out about its huge impact on Korean horror. The movie is Korea’s highest-grossing horror film and the first to be screened in America. It is consistently in top lists for one of the best films in Asian horror, and resonated a lot with audiences. It has a 2009 remake, The Uninvited, directed by the Guard Brothers.

Written and directed by Kim Jee Woon (A Quiet Family, I Saw the Devil, The Age of Shadows), the film follows Su Mi (Im Soo Jung), a teenager who has just been released from a mental hospital and sent back home with her sister, dad, and her new stepmother. Tensions rise between the girls and their stepmother, and with the constant nightmares of her dead mother, Su Mi is tormented.

Because of the nature of the movie, there really is no way to do any sort of a review/analysis without spoiling some things, so while I might not go over every plot of the story in this review, there will still be major spoilers. I highly suggest watching the movie before reading this or anything about the movie. Some of the plot is a surprise and really adds to the enjoyment of the movie as a whole. This is your warning.

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A Tale of Two Sisters is loosely based on a popular Joseon-era Korean fairy tale The Story of Janghwa and Hongryeon. Following the death of their mother, a father of two girls remarries a woman who does not like the girls and repeatedly abuses them. When the eldest is about to marry, the stepmother sabotages the marriage which exiles the daughter from the family. The mother tells one of her sons to push the daughter into a pond, where she drowns. While she is drowning a tiger comes and attacks the son. The mother gets what she wants with the daughter gone, but at the cost of her son, and becomes violent to the existing stepdaughter and eventually her fate is the same as the other stepdaughter. It isn’t until the girl’s ghosts are able to convince the new mayor of what the stepmother is doing that she is found guilty and sentenced to death. The story ends with the daughter’s spirits being able to rest, and the father remarrying with a new wife, bearing twins.

Still from the 1939 movie based on the fairy tale.

A Tale of Two Sisters has everything I love for a horror movie. I love dark, creepy, atmospheric stories that stay with me. There’s a mystery that is slowly being unfolded and you don’t know what’s going to happen. The tension is from the unknown rather than jump scares or gore.

When I’ve come across people talking about the movie, the biggest plot twist in the movie to them is the reveal that the sister, Su Yeon (Moon Geun Young), is dead. While it does add a great layer of surprise to the movie, I think it is intentionally set up to hold more weight to throw you off from what I believe is the greater twist: when you find out the horrific cause of death of the mother and her sister. When you realize why Su Mi is the way she is it makes the whole story so much more horrific because it’s real. The scare is not her dead mother appearing before her, or a ghost hand grabbing hers. It’s real-life horror that has emotionally ruined her life. Su Mi manifested her sister because she was the only comfort she had, the poor girl didn’t have a chance. Her sister is there the minute she returns to the house after coming back from the hospital. Su Yeon represents the only time that Su Mi was happy and becomes the only way to feel safe. Yet she is also her constant reminder of failure.

When Su Mi is confronted by the realization that her sister is dead, that’s when her mania goes into a tailspin and Su Yeon disappears from her side. The way Su Mi ‘sees’ her stepmother during the scenes of her dragging the bag is the manifestation of her rage and torment and it does such a good job of giving the viewer a greater understanding of what is going on in her head. The movie pulls you around constantly. From believing that the stepmother is really doing everything, to finding out that Su Mi is an unreliable narrator because everything you’ve just seen was her doing, to the realization that the true story is so much worse. It is literally placing you in the torment that Su Mi is actually in. It’s super effective and is probably one of my favorite things about the movie. I was horrified because I was seeing what she was, and it was unsettling.

Another thing that stuck with me from the first time I watched this and again after my rewatch, was the father’s role in everything. In the fairy tale that I talked about above, the father does not have much of a role in the story. He isn’t part of the abuse (the daughters choose not to tell him) but does believe the stepmother over the daughter. In the end, the girl’s spirits come to him to wish him a good life. In the movie, the father does a lot more even when he is shown doing the very least. It’s unsettling to see him interact with Su Mi because he knows that she’s still seeing her dead sister. He refuses to take away the piece of furniture in the house that is the literal cause of everything that happened. He doesn’t acknowledge that he has a greater role in the death of his first wife and his daughter or the mental trauma his eldest has to endure because of it. He has clearly admitted defeat in helping her. It’s a repeat of what he did with his first wife. He left her when she was mentally and physically unwell and moved on. He literally hid her in a closet to die.

A Tale of Two Sisters is a movie that I would recommend to everyone and is a personal favorite. While there are parts of the story that are classically horror, the real horror is in the events that happened in the house. I think it does a good job in combining real horrors with fake, and keeps you guessing the entire way through with great surprises and turns. The story unfolds in such a great way that it left me thinking for a while.

Let me know if you’ve watched the movie as well and your thoughts on it. This second viewing has really solidified my love for it, and I was able to focus on a lot more things that were going on without having to focus on the subtitles.

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White: Melody of Death (non-spoiler) Review

Native Title: 화이트: 저주의 멜로디
Release Date: June 9, 2011
Director: Kim Sun
Writer: Kim Gok
Genre: Horror
Starring: Ham Eun Jung, Hwang Woo Seul. Rest of the cast can be found here.

I have a soft spot for teen slasher films. I’ve been into horror and spooky stuff since I can remember, but around middle school/high school is when I started to get into it more, and those teen slasher movies were it. They are fun, exciting, the right level of gore and campiness and I was living through one of the best times for it. Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty…all premiered when I was a teen. While White: Melody of Death didn’t have the same punch as its Western counterpoints (I’m assuming because of the target audience) it did have some of those same fun elements.

I’ve had this on my list to watch for a really long time - actually most of the movies and dramas I’m going to be talking about in the next couple of months have been on my radar for a while - so it was nice to finally have an excuse to pick this one up now. I knew very little going into the film. I knew that it was about kpop. I knew that Junho had a slight cameo and that it starred the girl from T-ara and that it had this mysterious Ring-vibe to it. But that’s it.

White: Melody of Death is about a kpop group, the Pink Dolls, who are at the brink of dissolving. They are consistently losing on music shows, and only really have one more shot before they will disband. The main leader, Eun Ju (played by T-ara member Ham Eun Jung), finds a video in their new rehearsal space while cleaning up. It’s a grainy recording of a group performing an unfamiliar song. Her manager gets ahold of the tape and decides to use the song for their group, which skyrockets the group into stardom quickly. That’s when the problems start to happen.

One of the parts I liked most about the film was how they used the popularity and the craziness of fans to heighten some of the clips. The horrors and negative aspects of that business were brought up in the film. There were constant portrayals of the fans going nuts, screaming, and trying to grab at the girls - as well as being caught up in their own fandom to not realize the severity of what was going on or to really pick up the danger that the girls were being put in. The juxtaposition of the crazy fans who don’t care about their safety, and the knowledge of what the girls went through to get there was interesting. The constant pressure of the girls to keep going even after things started to go bad added to the real-life horror side of the movie.

I think that at parts the movie was hazy in its execution of this comparison, though. It would have been nicer if they had leaned into the ugly side of the industry a bit more. A lot of it was rushed or we just didn’t get to see it because the entity had to be present again. Issues they bring up such as jealousy, plastic surgery, and just general deception because of the nature of competition were lightly touched on and kind of glossed over and so it never came across as a good enough conflict, or just entirely unresolved. It created a lot of muddling and confusion to the storyline towards the end. You see where they were going, but those problems and pacing throws it off.

I do like what the movie was trying to do, even if they didn’t necessarily get there. If you are a kpop fan already, these parts tend to be more forgivable since you are already in the know of the problems in that industry and understand why it’s there, but if you go in as just a horror fan the context might get lost. In the end, the general horror audience wasn’t its target audience. With the Eun Jung (an actual well-known kpop idol) starring and cameos from other idols, the audience for it was a young kpop audience.

All-in-all I enjoyed the movie for what it was. It was fun, I enjoyed it as someone who spends a lot of time looking into the kpop world, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Friday night.

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Summer Horror

A year ago we did an episode for the podcast on Korea’s trend of horror being a summer thing, and I had a lot of fun researching for the episode. Since summer means we’re still a while out from Halloween, having a reason to celebrate horror a little bit earlier is pretty great. What better way to cool down than to be drenched in sweat and chills?

Korea’s move to promoting horror in movies and themed events during the summer actually was a result of the end of the military dictatorship. By the late ’90s, Korea’s government had lifted strong regulations and censorship on media that had been in place since the ’60s. This allowed Korean filmmakers to have a lot more freedom in what they made. Because of this, horror movies became easier and cheaper to make, allowing filmmakers a lot more artistic control. Horror was already a familiar and loved genre, but at the time it was from imported movies. The real explosion happened on May 30, 1998, when the movie Whispering Corridors was released and became a commercial success, making it one of the major reasons for the escalation of the Korean horror genre to increase in popularity. While other films will help solidify the summer months being the time to release horror, it was the first to help push the genre into this time of the year. Last October I did a review on the first Whispering Corridors movie, you can read it here.

You can also find more about our discussion and some of the shows/movies we watched by checking out the episode:

If you ever thought it was odd that Korea wasn’t pushing out horror content during Halloween, this is why. While recently it has been more common to see this genre show up in October because of the Western influence, Korea still hasn’t let go of the summer months. In non-pandemic times you’ll see a lot of horror movies in theatres. Theme parks and recreational areas will decorate and promote special rides and events during this time. Groups will release horror concepts.

Because I’m in the mood to always celebrate horror at any point in the year and love a well-planned excuse for it, for the next three months I will be focusing a lot of content on this blog on Korean horror - specifically the movies and dramas that came out during these months. While I still will have other normal posts, almost all of my content will exclusively lean to the horror side. I have a lot planned that will include reviews, highlights of popular movies releases, and a whole lot more.

If you are into horror or specifically want to dive more into what Korea has to offer, make sure you keep up here. I’ll be doing a lot on Twitter as well, so make sure to follow me there.

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Summer Friday Movie Nights: Red Carpet

Okay, listen. I had dreams to be a consistent human being and write one of these movie reviews every Friday, but apparently I’m not good at those things so here we are after not posting last week with a new review. It’s been a week since watching this one, so while it isn’t super fresh in my mind I might miss some things that I could have expanded upon. I try to jot down notes while watching things, but even in the best situations I miss stuff.

Today’s movie is Red Carpet - 레드카펫
Release Date: 2014
Director: Park Bum Soo
Starring: Yoon Kye Sang and Koh Joon Hee
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Platform: Netflix

Director/writer Jung Woo has dreams of producing his works in the film industry, but ends up working for porn films to pay the bills and to stay in the field while he tries to find his way in. Eun Soo is a former child actress who is trying to find her way back into the world of acting away from her former self. The two meet one night and develop a relationship.

Non-spoiler review: When going into the film, I didn’t expect it to turn into the movie that it was and was surprised how much I ended up enjoying it. The movie’s premise is simple: it’s about finding what you love to do and not letting the world’s assumptions tell you that you aren’t worthy of having your voice heard just because you went about it a different way. It has some funny moments, and a great supporting cast of quirky characters and I overall enjoyed it.

Now onto the more in-depth spoiler filled review!

There is one reason, and one reason only that I decided upon this specific movie when I was searching for a movie to watch: I saw Chansung from 2PM in the thumbnail.

I am a weak person and sometimes I only pick things because it has a Kpop Idol I like in it. If you think you can outgrow some things, I’m here to tell you friends it doesn’t matter what age you are. You can revert back to a 13 year old in an instant. However I am pleasantly surprised to have actually given this one a shot, because I came to like the movie much more than I ever would have if I had gone by the synopsis or even the very few reviews that are out there. The movie is admittedly a little silly, and has it’s moments that aren’t the best, but has such a great heart and message that I just really got into it. It also has Yoon Kye Sang from g.o.d in it. Double the idols!

The two leads meet because of the good old “renter-got-both-our money-for-the-same-place-and-bailed” switch. I should say at this point in the review: this film is pretty good at subtly smashing the assumptions you make based on things that are happening, and also within the world of that characters itself. This scene kind of kicks off that by playing up a standard trope right off the bat so that you are forced into an assumption of how things are going to play out. The two became close as she learns he is a screenwriter and enjoys his work, and he starts to fall for her as he learns that she is a pretty decent actress (they also have to do that share the same place thing for a while, so that kind of helps with the tension). They share a night together, and she ends up getting a gig after all of his coaching.

She goes to give him a gift as a thank you, but ends up visiting him while he’s shooting. She doesn’t know he’s shooting, nor does she even know he works in the porn industry, and assumes he’s cheating on her. She leaves him there, without saying a word and without him even knowing that she showed up. I kind of love this plot point as it relates to the assumptions theme in the movie. She leaves because she thinks he’s cheating on her. When she leaves you realize that the porn director - who one might assume is fine with one night stands because of what he does for living - is pretty devastated by it. Assumptions!

The second act of the movie is spent with him slowly crumbling, while she’s flourishing. She gets her break, while he starts to slip out of the sight of what he really wants to do. He stops trying to find someone who will take his script, and while we had seen previously that working in porn and the fallouts of that wasn’t too hard on him, the negatives start to hinder his ability to continue his journey of his dream. He finally gets the courage to meet her again, and she agrees. While they meet at a coffee shop it is only then that she finally learns that he works in porn because her director for her current film (drama? I can’t remember. Thing she’s acting in) is at the same place.

At this point, you the viewer might assume that she might be disgusted by this revelation of news. Or decide that she can’t be seen with him because it will ruin her reputation as an actress and that its going to become the new obstacle of the movie…but that’s not the case. She actually doesn’t care all that much finding out what he does for a living. If anything, it just makes her finally realize what was actually happening the day she left, and she’s ok with it. Oh, if people would just talk then we wouldn’t have these assumptions! They form a friendship again, and she agrees to work on his film, the one he’s been writing, because she believes in his work. She goes into this knowing what it can do to her career and the way that she is perceived, but she believes enough in him and his work that she doesn’t care. For her, she’s never actually cared about those things.

There is a scene where Jung Woo is at Eun Soo’s agency to talk about what they are going to do with the bad press that’s coming out after she’s been spotted working on this movie with a porn director. Jung Woo is having a hard time, as he knows that because of who he is Eun Soo is getting the negative outcome. As Jung Woo is leaving, there is a painting behind him. It is of three people, nude from behind. It’s abstract enough to be a little less visible, but still clear enough to know what it is. The blocking played really well with what they were trying to accomplish for this movie. Here he was, the porn director who’s work is deemed morally wrong and not artistic, in the same room as this other work of nudity in a different medium that is fine and acceptable art.

The movie ends how you kind of expect: the movie they are working on is finally finished and ends up getting picked up at a tiny film festival where the reaction to it is positive and genuine. Eun Soo leaves a major film festival to visit the small one and Eun Soo and Jung Woo are finally together.

I didn’t talk about them, and don’t really have the time, but I do want to touch quickly on the minor characters in the movie. I’m a sucker for good minor characters. I love an array of background characters that aren’t just there to hold up the mains but to have their own life and heart and this movie has that. You genuinely start to love this group of colleagues that have become friends. Their roots all tied to the porn industry gives the laughs, but they really hone into the insight of people being made to feel bad about themselves. We see this in the fight scene at the bar where the girls are reduced down to just beings the patrons think they can grope; but you also see the rise of them becoming their own and defending who they are as people and standing up for each other. They fight for and support Jung Woo’s vision of his movie. I really loved them. They were quirky and fun and really added to the movie.

One of the things that I dislike most of the time about dramas, or really any entertainment for that matter, is the use of overplayed tropes. They are used as a crutch. A way to get the viewer into the script with familiarity, and a way to write something a little bit easier with those prompts. I understand why they are done, and I’m not one to hate something because they happen to be used, but sometimes they can be exhausting when you just want something a little bit different than you expected. This movie kind of took me on that journey. Albeit, it still has it’s tropes and the ending is very predictable, I really enjoyed seeing the movie start to pick up on these overused plots and were aware and ever so slightly change them to something you may not have expected. In a way, that was my own assumption of the movie on whole when I started to watch it: I assumed the movie about a porn director would be campy and cheap humor and in the end it wasn’t about that. In fact it had very little to do with that. It was about people who were being ostracized because they were doing something they loved in a different way than society assumed they should be doing. And in the end, I really liked what this film did to focus on assumptions that are made, and I loved that they went about it in such an off-the-wall way of telling that story. This movie isn’t going to be for everyone, and has it’s share of campy and not so great writing and acting, but in the end the movie had heart. It was funny and enjoyable…and isn’t that what a movie should be?

Here's the trailer if you are interested. I couldn't find an English sub, but I think you can pick up on things fairly easily: