“Doomsday Book” starts off my Asian cinema month here at Filmarcade.net, as I’ll be reviewing various films from Asia this. I’ve been looking forward to “Doomsday Book” for a while, since I heard about it at last year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. At the festival, the film won the Cheval Noir Award for Best Film. It’s directed by Yim Pi-sung (Hansel & Gretel) and Kim Jee-Woon (I Saw the Devil and the recent Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Last Stand). That alone drew interest for this film.
The film is about what happens on the other side of technology and the innovations it makes. Korea has become ground zero for a zombie apocalypse, as the rotten trash of one man has spawned it. A repairman is struggling while a robot is trying to find a higher mind, as he challenges the idea of consciousness. The end of the world is caused by one family’s billiard ball and a misguided internet order. All these stories make up the sci-fi/horror film called ”Doomsday Book”.
I was surprised that this wasn’t your typical sci-fi/ horror film, which I thought it was going to be. Still, it’s very original and different from most films that you’ll see.
There were three stories that were all stand alone. It was good that it was the formatted that way, because of all the weirdness that was going on within each of the stories. It had a nice flow to the film.
First, you had Yim Pi-sung’s “Brave New World”, which was the weakest of the three films. The segment had good direction for Pi-sung, as he does a very good job directing the zombie action. It was different than your normal zombie film, as it focused more on the zombies and how the fact that they can recognize each other. The last five minutes of that film is what made the segment work for me, as it felt like it was going downhill in the middle by focusing on the politics of the zombie apocalypse instead of the of the problem at hand. The next segment was the best segment of the bunch, Kim Jee-Woon’s “The Heavenly Creature”. What made that segment very good was the way that Je-Woon handles everything. From the screenplay to his directing, everything was dead on. He carefully makes sure that the story generates a response, by creating main characters that are likable and interesting. The other thing that I liked about watching this segment was the movement of the robot. Je-Woon and his team did a very job in making the movements of the robot look very lifelike. I don’t know if this was done remote control or CGI, it felt very lifelike and special. This is one of the best piece of filmmaking that I’ve seen so far this year. The film wraps up Pi sung’s “Happy Birthday”. This was a much better segment than his first one. Pi-sung does a very good job making the characters quirky. Whether it’s the screenplay or the way that he directs the acting, it made the characters and the story interesting and different. The other thing that I liked about this story was that it kept the focus mostly on the family and not at the conflict at hand. This could have been your typical end of the world story with characters trying prevent a disaster, but this focuses more on the family dynamic while not getting too weird.
Overall, I had a good time with “Doomsday Book”. With good direction and entertaining stories, this film is worth a viewing if you’re into Asian horror/sci-fi.
Review Rating: Three and a half stars.
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