Yeon Sang-ho gained worldwide acclaim with his debut live-action feature film, Train to Busan, and the companion animated film, Seoul Station. He followed that up with Psychokinesis, which was a superhero flick; Peninsula, a sequel to Train to Busan; and Jung_E, a sci-fi action thriller, to varying degrees of success. But while making all these feature films, I guess something clicked inside him, and he turned his sights towards religion—well, religious fanaticism, to be specific. Hellbound featured literal demons from the underworld, and the series imagined humanity turning against each other instead of putting up a united front against actual monsters that were dragging people to the netherworld. Parasyte: The Grey had body-snatching aliens in it, and one of its subplots involved a parasitic entity using religious politics to become the most powerful person in the country. Revelations is relatively grounded in reality in comparison to those two projects, but Sang-ho’s criticism of the misuse of religion continues to get more and more pointed.
Yeon Sang-ho’s Revelations, based on the webtoon by Sang-ho and Choi Gyu-seok, opens with a girl named Shin A-yeong being followed into the Mission Nation Church by Kwon Yang-rae. Assuming the stalker is a newcomer, the church’s pastor, Sung Min-chan, tries to get him registered as a member of the religious institution. Min-chan’s interview with Yang-rae is disrupted by a call from a private investigator who reveals that his wife, Lee Si-yeong, is cheating on him. When Min-chan returns to Yang-rae, he is on his way out, and the pastor notices the vagabond’s ankle monitor, which somewhat disturbs him. Min-chan’s day worsens when he learns he is not in line to become the pastor of the massive church that’s being opened in his neighborhood. On top of all that, when Si-yeong informs him that Yeon-u, the couple’s child, has gone missing, Min-chan tracks down Yang-rae and apparently kills him. Later on, as Inspector Lee Yeon-hui joins the Violent Crimes Unit, it becomes clear that Yeon-u is fine, but Yang-rae has abducted A-yeong. As Yeon-hui rushes to find the missing girl while dealing with her own complicated past with Yang-rae, Min-chan tries his best to bury his act of crime by using “divine revelation” as an excuse.
Revelations is about religion, abuse, and guilt. Min-chan justifies his heinous actions, which have been triggered by his wife’s adulterous activity, by thinking he is being guided by the Almighty. Yang-rae is driven by his need to inflict the pain and horrors that he had suffered as a child upon the rest of the world, but specifically young women. Yeon-hui is haunted by the fact that she couldn’t do enough to save her sister from Yang-rae and the suicidal thoughts that she suffered from after his acquittal. And all of these plot threads sort of come together to paint a grim portrait of humanity. Through this complicated and often disjointed narrative, Sang-ho and Gyu-seok wonder if there’s any room left for goodness or if the whole socio-cultural landscape has been captured by religious fanatics and rapists. Unlike Sang-ho and Gyu-seok’s last project together, they are a little more optimistic about the fate of our species this time around. Whether or not you find that to be realistic is totally up to your personal experiences and preferences. But one thing is for sure: after watching this film, the next time you see some religious nut claiming they’ve seen their favorite god in a broken piece of rock or the trunk of a tree, you’ll find it difficult to not whack them across the face.
The visual storytelling, tone, and overall atmosphere of Revelations is like a blend of Prisoners, I Saw the Devil, Se7en, Memories of Murder, Raman Raghav 2.0, and maybe even a bit of Ugly. I don’t know if it has become cliche for police procedurals and crime thrillers to use rain to heighten the viewing experience, but it certainly works on me. As soon as it starts raining and somebody does something unlawful, my training kicks in and I become fully focused. The cinematography, the editing, the sound design, the performances—all of it just starts to flow in a way that’s not possible if the frames are, well, dry. The wetter, the better. The crown jewel of the film is this intense confrontation between Min-chan, Yang-rae, and Yeon-hui, which is seemingly all done in one long take. The whole good-vs.-evil-vs.-monstrous imagery, the oscillation of the camera, and the gritty-as-hell fight are done so beautifully. I don’t know how many takes it took to pull that off, but I can personally assure the cast and crew that the effort was worth it. If there are any hidden cuts in there, I didn’t notice them at all. That said, there’s a massive flaw in the writing that impacts every aspect of the film and is only marginally saved by the performances.
I have already criticized this trend (?) this week after I saw Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, an Indian show, and it’s surprising that I am complaining about it again because of Revelations, a South Korean movie. Maybe it just goes to show that art and its flaws are universal in nature. Anyway, coming to the issue at hand, the main problem with the storytelling in Sang-ho’s film is that, with the exception of A-yeong’s fate, it gives the audience all the information about a certain incident and then makes them retread those steps along with the protagonist. For example, Min-chan loudly announces where the final showdown between the central characters is going to happen. Then it spends a chunk of its runtime on Yeon-hui figuring out where the aforementioned location is. But since, as a viewer, I am already one step ahead of the protagonist, the investigation loses my interest. And this happens multiple times! In my opinion, the audience should either be under the impression that they know more than the characters, or they should always learn new stuff through the eyes of said characters. Sure, Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyun-been, Shin Min-jae, and the rest of the supporting cast are so fantastic that I kind of ignored this major issue with the writing. However, if this style of storytelling isn’t fixed soon, I think even the best actors will struggle to hold the viewers’ attention.
Any movie or series that shows that the line between religious fanaticism and sanity is being systematically blurred so that the poor are either too busy blaming God or justifying their actions in the name of God, instead of holding those in power accountable, immediately gets a thumbs up from me. I do recommend giving Revelations a watch, especially if you see government officials and political parties promoting the views of people like Sung Min-chan on a daily basis on national TV. If you are a fan of crime thrillers, I think you’ll enjoy it. If you are a fan of the actors, I’m sure that you’ll appreciate their work. If you are a fan of Yeon Sang-ho, I feel that you’ll be a little disappointed. He has set the standard so high that it’s a bit tough to accept something mediocre (I mean that in a positive way) from him. I am loving the fact that he is on this journey to criticize the hell out of religious fanaticism though, and I can’t wait to see how he evolves his commentary in the next project. By the way, if you want to watch a comparatively lighthearted take on divine intervention, you can pair this up with Little Siberia and have a holy weekend.
