I would rate this debut feature more highly if the English title had been Hooray for Hell, because it better fits the idiosyncratic tone of the film. The protagonists are a pair of high school girls whose friendship is initially deceptive. Both Na-mi (Oh Woo-ri) and Seon-woo (Bang Hyo-rin) are victims of school bullies, though we eventually learn that the latter used to be tormented by the former before the former herself became a target. During a humorously botched suicide attempt, Seon-woo tells Na-mi that their mutual tormentor, Chae-rin (Yung Yi-ju), has moved with her family to Seoul due to the father’s bankruptcy. Nevertheless, the skinny on the street is that Chae-rin is doing even better than ever, and is planning to go overseas to study. Hearing of this, Na-mi loses it and decides to postpone her self-obliteration in order to get back at Chae-rin before she skips the country, and enlists Seon-woo in her scheme even though she still hasn’t worked out the details. 

When they arrive in Seoul they discover that their nemesis has actually joined a Christian cult. She’s already confessed to and repented for her cruelties, and in fact welcomes her former classmates for the opportunity to be punished and forgiven by them. Consequently, Na-mi’s and Seon-woo’s dreams of revenge are deflated, leaving them in a mental quandary: How to gain satisfaction from someone who may still deserve their enmity but isn’t fazed by it. The kicker is that they are still bent on somehow sticking it to Chae-rin and hang around under the pretense of perhaps joining the cult until the other shoe drops, which it eventually does with an enormous crash after they learn that the cult is a money-making scam, at which point the movie turns into a frantic horror thriller.

Hail to Hell betrays the typical plot inconsistencies and unsteady comic tone of a debut feature, but the writer-director, Lim Oh-jeong, seems so immersively steeped in the culture of bullying that she’s able to gain considerable mileage from a premise that’s been done to death, especially in Korea, mostly by constantly keeping the story moving in unexpected directions. It may not be the last cinematic word on the social dynamics of bullying, but it’s certainly the most original. 

In Korean. Now playing in Tokyo at Euro Space Shibuya (03-3461-0211).

Hail to Hell home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2022 Korean Film Council