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Midnight
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th March 2022). |
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The Film
 Kyung Mi (Ki-joo Jin) is a deaf office worker often frustrated with being excluded from socializing events by her co-workers. When her co-workers show disdain after their boss asks them to go out for drinks with clients, Kyung Mi steps forward shaming her superiors with the prospect of discrimination based on her disability; and she spends the night pretending not to be aware of the clients' crude remarks and behavior. After picking up her mother (Hae-yeon Kil) later that night, Kyung Mi is sidetracked from meeting up with her after parking their car when she stumbles upon a high heel in the middle of the sidewalk. Peering into the alley, she is shocked to be accosted by So Jung (Kim Hye-Yoon) who has been stabbed and is bleeding to death. Kyung Mi narrowly escapes the masked killer who comes back to finish the job, but her safety with her mother under the spotlight and police camera at the end of the street is short-lived when they begin to suspect that the seemingly nice young man Do Shik (Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum's Wi Ha-Joon) who claims to be searching for his missing sister is actually the killer as he undermines Kyung Mi's statement to the police who do not find a body in the alley. When So Jung's real brother Jong Tak So (Park Hoon), a police officer, turns up frantically searching for her, Do Shik cannot help but goad him into attacking him, escaping when the Jong Tak So's fellow officers believe the overwrought officer is attacking an innocent man. Unfortunately, Do Shik now knows where Kyung Mi and her mother live and promises that he is going to kill at least one of them before the night is over. The feature debut of short filmmaker Oh-Seung Kwon (who also scripted), Midnight has its share of Hollywood-level groan-worthy plot contrivances but it stands out from similar fare by its treatment of characters with disabilities, whose vulnerability and outright helplessness have provided suspense fodder going back to films like The Spiral Staircase and Wait Until Dark through the likes of See No Evil the protagonists of Midnight have more in common with "The Eyes Have It" episode of Thriller to name another Brian Clemens-scripted work Hear No Evil, Mute Witness, and most recently Hush. Kyung Mi and her mother are portrayed as independent and confident, with Kyung Mi amused by her boss scrambling to assure the clients that her signed retorts to their vulgarity are not insults, and managing to be fully communicative with one another in sharp contrast to So Jung and Jong Tak So or even the killer whose verbalized convolutions of logic get him into more trouble than not and eventually prove to be his undoing (it is also more often amusing than annoying that people take advantage of his verbosity to try to get away from him). Although there is definitely a running theme of males not taking females seriously even to the extent of suggesting that Kyung Mi could have imagined a stabbed woman and being chased by a masked killer after having had a couple drinks more so women who have "trouble" communicating effectively, Do Shik can only go so far in taking advantage of this apparent weakness because his ego and impulse control are almost as infantile as they are bigoted (when he reports the discovery of one of his victims to the police, he claims to have seen the crime committed by "foreign workers"), and Kyung Mi reduced to begging after the killer has shown how quickly he a seemingly normal and handsome young guy can portray a woman, particularly a deaf woman, as crazy to onlookers eventually realizes that she does not need physical strength or a voice to truly hit him where it hurts. After an engrossing setup introducing the characters, the film vaults into an extended chase sequence after which it starts to stumble through plot contrivances intended to rush the viewer towards another extended chase; however, the central relationship between mother and daughter keeps things compelling even as other characters make incredibly stupid decisions, and the viewer who gets a visceral thrill out of seeing the killer get his physically painful comeuppances (more than one) will breathe a sigh of relief when the film foregoes an unnecessary final scare. Although imperfect, Midnight is an assured debut that takes the novel tactic of treating characters with disabilities as people whose drive is more than just to survive a horror film. 
Video
Digitally-lensed and graded, there is little to complain about Eureka's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen encode of Midnight which sports deep blacks, gritty textures, and skin tones that are believably tinged with various color temperature lights of the urban setting including some striking color gels and detail is fittingly tactile when necessary from sweaty skin to axe-splintered wood.
Audio
The only audio option is a Korean DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, and the results are phenomenal as the filmmakers manipulate sound levels to convey the world of its deaf characters and even scenes where the audible world of hearing characters dips as they wonder if signing characters are talking about them. The optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by an audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger who discusses the film in the context of South Korea's serial killer-based horror cinema from I Saw the Devil onwards distinguished from the Western model by a lesser concern with humanizing the killer by examining the root of their motivation but also what it has to say about the safety of women, people with disabilities, and the patriarchal attitudes. The disc also includes the visual essay "Korean Horror Cinema" (22:24) by film historian Travis Crawford which has little to say about the film at hand but does examine the circumstances which have lead viewers to believe that South Korea's horror cinema tradition began in the nineties at the earliest; noting that Japanese occupation and poor preservation have meant that a lot of the country's horror output is lost. He provides a survey of the countries horror practitioners, be they jobbing filmmakers or seeming specialists based on what is available of their output including Ki-young Kim and his trilogy The Housemaid, Woman of Fire, and Woman of Fire '82 the latter two not remakes of the first film but reworkings from different character perspectives with different visual styles The Insect Woman, and the wild Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death. Although The Korean Film Archive and the Korean Film Database have made a number of rare titles available some with English subtitles including A Monstrous Corpse (a near shot-for-shot rip-off of the Spanish/Italian zombie film The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, many remain lost and tantalizing on the basis of their translated titles (and sometimes posters) alone. 
Packaging
The first pressing of 2,000 copies comes with a limited edition silver laminate O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Grιgory Sacrι (Gokaiju) as well as a 19-page collector's booklet featuring new writing by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas whose essay "Surviving Silence and the Deception of Disability in Midnight" in which she also notes the simplicity of characterization of serial killers in South Korean cinema, adding "ableist" to the other defining characteristics of "psychotic", "violent", and "misogynist" while also noting that the film is indeed "not his story" but that of two characters we see as grossly underestimated by other people as they are by the killer.
Overall
Although imperfect, Midnight is an assured debut that takes the novel tactic of treating characters with disabilities as people whose drive is more than just to survive a horror film.
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