Film Picks: Dr Cheon And The Lost Talisman, In My Mother’s Skin, Japanese Film Festival
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Gang Dong-won stars as shady shaman Dr Cheon in the fantasy-thriller, Dr Cheon And The Lost Talisman.
PHOTO: GOLDEN VILLAGE
Dr Cheon And The Lost Talisman (PG13)
96 minutes, now showing, 4 stars
Dr Cheon (Gang Dong-won) is a medium. Or rather, he claims to be. In reality, he is a social media star who has made a fortune parting fools from their money. Eccentric young woman Yoo-kyung (Esom) hires him for a ghost-busting job, which he accepts, thinking she is one more fan of his YouTube channel primed to fall for his fakery.
One would have to go back to The Mummy (1999) or, more recently, the tragically under-appreciated Dungeons And Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) to find a similar blend of action, comedy and horror-fantasy.
South Korean director Kim Seong-sik handles the mix of humour, martial arts and the macabre with ease.
The story is also rooted in present-day South Korea. The cultural references are precise and funny – shamans are stars of reality shows; the rich make profane use of sacred objects because they know nothing about Korean history. And the strain of trying to survive in hyper-capitalist South Korea, as the hero observes, is enough to make anyone see ghosts.
Japanese Film Festival 2023
A section of this year’s festival honours Meiko Kaji, the Japanese actress who specialised in exploitation films featuring light titillation, swordplay and wrath-fuelled women, a format that would inspire American film-maker Quentin Tarantino to create the Kill Bill (2003 and 2004) martial arts films.
Blind Woman’s Curse (1970, NC16, 85 minutes) is one of Kaji’s lesser-known films, but features her in classic mode as the katana-wielding Akemi, leader of a crime clan ravaged by enemies, among them a woman seeking redress for an act of violence inflicted by Akemi a long time ago.
The original trailer for the film says it best: “Genius director Teruo Ishii has created a film of morbid and violent eroticism.”
Meiko Kaji (right, in brown coat) stars in the Japanese revenge classic Blind Woman's Curse.
PHOTO: THE PROJECTOR
Where: The Projector, 05-00 Golden Mile Tower, 6001 Beach Road
MRT: Nicoll Highway/Lavender
When: Saturday and Sunday, 8.30pm
Admission: $15 for standard ticket prices
Info: str.sg/ipq7
In My Mother’s Skin (NC16)
97 minutes, available on Prime Video
Online news site The Verge, in reviewing this Philippines-Singapore-Taiwan co-production, says that through its use of local myths, fairy-tale tone and wartime setting, this work of horror is like Oscar-winning Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – only “a lot scarier”.
Created by Manila-based writer-director Kenneth Dagatan, the story opens in the waning days of World War II.
Under the Japanese, the Filipino populace, among them teenager Tala (Felicity Kyle Napuli) and her mother Ligaya (Beauty Gonzalez) are starving. Ligaya falls ill, so a desperate Tala seeks help from a forest fairy (Jasmine Curtis-Smith). However, the girl discovers that the cure comes with gruesome side effects.
In My Mother’s Skin, Dagatan’s second film after the horror flick Ma (2018), was selected for 2023’s Sundance Film Festival, where it had its world premiere in the Midnight Section.
Beauty Gonzalez as Ligaya, a sickly mother cured by supernatural means, in the Filipino horror film In My Mother's Skin.
PHOTO: EPICMEDIA PRODUCTIONS
