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[HanCinema's Film Review] The Bystander Effect: "Neighbors"

Film: "Neighbors" (이웃사람; I-woot-sa-lam)

Director: Kim Hwi Writer: Kang Full

Stars: Kim Yunjin, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Sae-ron & Kim Seong-yoon

Review Score: 4 / 5

Neighbors, they are those shadowy individuals that lurk outside and within your shared spaces. The ones who you sometimes hear through a shared wall, or perhaps run into while attempting to dump your unsorted garbage late at night. They know more about you than you think, and you know less about them than you should. In "Neighbors", all-round creative wizard Kim Hwi fearfully probes the difference between being apathetic towards these blank faces that sleep under the same roof as yourself, and a real sense of community that comes from a collected sense of being, shared goals, and the will to act for that illusive greater good.

Released in 2012, "Neighbors" is another successful adaptation of one of Kang Full's web-based comics (called webtoons in Korea). In fact, "Neighbors" is Pool's most successful adaptation to date. In addition to the respectable 2,432,877 admissions the film saw here in Korea, a number of Korea's top film awards (49th Daejang Film Awards, Busan Film Critics Awards, as well the 2012 Korean Association of Film Critics) panels acknowledged the film, especially the fantastically eerie performance of Kim Sung-kyun in the 'Best New Actor' category.

Kim plays the stoic and mysterious Seung-hyeok, a murdering psychopath who dwells on the first floor of the apartment blocks around which the film is set. After being left at school on one rainy evening, Yeo-seon (played by Kim Sae-ron), an adorable middle-school girl, is forced to walk home in the damp and miserable weather and takes refuge in a stranger who offers to drive her home. Yeo-seon is never seen alive again as her twisted Samaritan abducts and murder's her without apparent cause or reason other than his own sick pleasures. Much to the dismay of her step-mother (Kim Yunjin as Kyeong-hee), Yeo-seon continues to arrive back back, dripping, depressed, and very much dead-haunting her and constantly reminding her of her failure as mother and the personal guilt she feels as a result of her fate.

Seung-hyeok's murderous intent is not, however, limited to just Kyeong-hee's little girl. Every ten days he selects and abducts a new victim; dragging them into his tiled den where he feeds them pizza before shortly disposing of their bodies in expensive suitcases. As Seung goes about his dastardly and deviant behaviour, more and more of the surrounding community become suspicious of his uncommunicative and aloof presence in their block of flats. Landlords, security guards, business owners, and even his pizza delivery boy become alerted to his dubious existence, but none think to probe until it's too late.

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In social psychology there is term know as "the bystander effect" that strongly resonates with this film. In essence, it describes one's inability to act within a community space due to the false assumption that, in a crisis, others will mostly like act so you don't have to. Seung-hyeok maybe posses a disgustingly crooked senses of pleasure, but a genius he is not. Signs and clues of his bloody pastime are very quickly brought to attention of his pizza delivery boy, the landlord, the security guards, as well as the storeowner who is selling him the suitcases he uses to dispose of the bodies. Many of whom taper their suspicions and have/create their own, selfish, reasons for not acting on the worrying signs left by their neighbour. Their property prices might be affected if a known serial killer is caught in their building, customers will stop coming if they hear the news of where he bought his suitcases, retirement plans threaten and, sometimes, just plan ignorance or uncertainty rules.

This is the crux of Hwi's film as the status quo is destructively over-valued within this community, suggesting a sickening social apathy and unwillingness to act when needed. In addition to this strong and vivid theme, the film contains some brilliant acting lead by, but not limited to, Kim Sung-kyun. His creepy demeanour is contrasted with the brazen ignorance and innocence found within a lot of the community members especially that of the young girl Soo-yeon (also played by Kim Sae-ron). Interestingly it is Kim's character's own irreproachable innocence and kindness that actually, by accident of course, sets in motion the communities final response to the festering immorality that lurks, not in some distance area or faraway district, but right next door.

- C.J Wheeler (chriscjw@gmail.com)

* Christopher is a film writer and a graduate arts student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He lived and worked in South Korea for four years and there he channelled his passion for film into the Korean cinema scene. Driven by his rampant cinephilic needs and Korea's vibrant cinema, Chris now enjoys watching Korean films and writing about what he thinks of them.

 

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