[HanCinema's Film Review] "Bullies Season 2: Goblin"

I think, although I am not very confident in this assessment, that "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is intended to be a continuation of the "Bullies" series of direct-to-streaming films. The reason for my doubt is that there have been so many "Bully" films in recent years that it's hard to tell what, if anything, any of them have to do with each other. All I know for sure is that the South Korean market can support a whole lot of low budget action films featuring not especially convincing high school students in a dark palette getting into fistfights with each other.

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"Bullies Season 2: Goblin" does itself no favors with a needlessly complicated framing device. In-ho (played by Kim Hyun-II) is the titular Goblin, a legendary figure in the middle school gangster hierarchy who has long since vanished, principally because he got tired of fighting and decided he'd rather study instead. In the present day, Hyeong-tae (played by Jung Myung-kyun) and Hong-yeon (played by Jung Jik-han) have come to fill the power vacuum.

Neither recognizes In-ho, because he's a bit of a nerd who mainly likes to study which is why he showed up and disappeared the way he did. We see both flashbacks, with the weakling In-ho, and present-day storylines with the more confident version who's struggling to stay incognito and mostly succeeding because none of his classmates are very good at recognizing faces. Neither am I, for that matter, which makes it a bit of a challenge to follow the movie's continuity.

But you don't really need to understand what "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is actually about to be able to understand the main appeal, which the pretext for lots of kickboxing. And for what it's worth, "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is pretty above average in that department. Director Park Chang-jin gives us plenty of fight scenes, introducing new mostly forgettable characters as necessary to facilitate more elaborate challenges for our hero.

As far as tone goes "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is charmingly nonchalant, with our hero mostly bemused by his awesome powers, more appreciative of the fact that he has them then looking for any particular excuse to use them. It's actually kind of funny watching In-ho walk around with his extremely neat and dorky comment, just pretending to be as naive and ignorant, while having to be truthful as necessary. An early scene where In-ho has to apologize for being late to school because he stopped a mugging sets the tone fairly well.

Still, "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" never really quite descends as far as farce, despite the fact that In-ho quite literally learns how to fight by reading a book and doing silly poses in his apartment. School life itself is played entirely seriously, to the extent you can really describe such petty drama in that way. "Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is a very functional movie. It will appeal to its target audience of people who like action movies where all the characters are wearing school uniform, yet like much of the genre, has little appeal beyond that specific interest.

Review by William Schwartz

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"Bullies Season 2: Goblin" is directed by Park Chang-jin, and features Kim Hyun-II, Jung Myung-kyun, Kim Jin-woo-VII, Chun Jae-young, Cho Seong-gu, Yoon Sang-yi. Release date in Korea: 2019/09/16.

 

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