Dark Nuns

At the time when Jang Jae-hyun's directorial debut The Priests premiered in 2015, the very idea of a Korean occult movie featuring exorcist priests and young victims possessed by demons was a bit unusual. Ten years later, thanks to a string of similarly-themed films - not to mention the success of Director Jang's own Exhuma - Korean occult is in its heyday. Dark Nuns is billed as a sequel to The Priests, and its story builds off of the earlier work, although we follow a different set of characters in a new setting. Most notably, instead of priests, the protagonists of this new film are nuns.

Sister Yunia (Song Hye-kyo) is not a typical nun - she smokes cigarettes, and likes to use coarse language. Even more unusually, she has been trained in exorcism, which is usually only taught to male priests. But she has a particular affinity for the art. As the film opens, her skills are desperately needed: a young boy has been possessed by something vicious, and nobody has been able to help him. But the head priest in charge of the hospital where the boy stays does not believe in demons or possession, insisting that the only thing that can help the boy is psychiatric treatment. Yunia attempts an intervention, but her efforts are thwarted, until she takes notice of a younger nun serving under the head priest. Sister Michaela (Jeon Yeo-been) is soft-spoken, and when Yunia tells her she can sense that she is spiritually gifted, Michaela recoils as if in disgust. But Yunia knows that she will only be able to expel the demon with Michaela's help.

Dark Nuns is the third feature film by director Kwon Hyeok-jae (Troubleshooter, Count), and his first occult movie. He embraces much of the conventional imagery we associate with the genre, but also brings elements of shamanism into the story. The percussive clamor of Korean shamanic rites combined with the prayers and shouts of Catholic exorcism combine to create some of this film's most iconic scenes.

The film benefits considerably from the casting of Song Hye-kyo, one of the undisputed top stars in Korea who returns to the big screen after a run on television that included mega-hit Descendants of the Sun and the 2022 Netflix series The Glory. Earlier in her career, Song was cast almost exclusively in romantic roles, but in recent years she has excelled at portraying darker, tougher characters. The sharp edge to Sister Yunia's personality makes her an enjoyable character to watch as she rails against the prejudice and naiveté of those around her. The casting of Jeon Yeo-been as Michaela is somewhat less effective -- though this is no fault of Jeon, whose prodigious talent was demonstrated in early independent films like After My Death. The character of Michaela is simply too one-dimensional to give Jeon much to work with. As time passes it's becoming clear that the Korean film industry has recognized Jeon Yeo-been's potential, but has also struggled to come up with roles to make full use of her talent.

Ultimately, Dark Nuns feels quite conventional and by-the-numbers in terms of its place within the occult genre. It's true that the outsider status of the two main characters, so overlooked and underestimated by others, lends a certain poignancy to their desperate efforts to save the young boy. But in the end, Dark Nuns doesn't add anything new to the genre and so will probably not last long in the memory, however nicely shot and performed it may be.      (Darcy Paquet)

    The Square

Animation has the power to transport viewers to imaginary realms, to ancient civilizations, or to distant planets - anywhere the creator's imagination wishes to go. The setting for The Square is contemporary North Korea: a real-life location in today's world, but one that is so inaccessible to most people, it may feel like an alternate reality. Made in South Korea by writer-director Kim Bo-sol, The Square is a rare look at life inside the reclusive country, and the kind of film that could surely not have been made in North Korea itself.

Isak Borg is a Swedish diplomat who has been assigned to work with the ambassador in Pyongyang. As a foreign dignitary, he has his own apartment and leads a comparatively comfortable life. But North Korea is not the sort of country to let a high-profile foreign citizen like him to go unmonitored. An impassive guard stands at the entrance to his apartment building, recording his comings and goings each day. Borg has an official interpreter named Myung-jun who assists him with daily activities, but a kind of wall exists between them. Borg tries his best to invite him over for a beer, or to give him small gifts, but he is always rebuffed. Despite the attention that follows him wherever he goes, it's a solitary existence for Borg, highlighted by the film's opening sequence of him pedaling his bike alone in circles around a gigantic, empty square.

Nonetheless in secret, Borg has made the acquaintance of a friendly traffic officer, and they have fallen in love. They meet in various corners of the city, and she pretends to be his official tour guide. At restaurants they sit at separate tables, sharing surreptitious smiles as they eat. Borg knows there will be consequences for her if she is found to be dating a foreigner, but his feelings for her run deeper by the day. With his posting in Pyongyang soon to reach its end, he applies to be reinstated for another year.

Told from Borg's perspective, The Square is an unusual but thought-provoking look at contemporary North Korea. Although it doesn't comment directly on the political issues we most often associate with the country, it does intend to give the viewer a sense of life in an authoritarian, surveillance state. There is a particular kind of loneliness that exists in a society where strangers must be careful of how they interact with one another.

The portrait of Pyongyang that emerges in The Square is centered around ordinary spaces such as the subway or outdoor markets, with famous landmarks usually relegated to the background. There is a realistic but intimate and luminous quality to the animation which is one of the film's strong points. Director Kim Bo-sol and production designer Oh Yu-jin may not have been able to visit Pyongyang to storyboard this film, but the visuals of the city are obviously well-researched, and feel convincing.

One twist to this story is that Borg's grandmother who sends him care packages from Sweden is, in fact, Korean. At the end of the Korean War, prisoners of war in South Korea were given the choice of returning to the North, remaining in the South, or as his grandmother chose to do, settling in a neutral country. With his blonde hair, Borg doesn't look one-quarter Korean, but his background has helped him to master the language, and made him feel closer to this nation which so obviously wants to keep him at arm's length. In some ways, The Square is a bittersweet story about identity.

Shot over 6 years on an extremely limited budget, and set in a nation where the director would not be welcome to visit, The Square is a film that favors empathy over ideology. So much of what we see and read about North Korea exaggerates and sensationalizes its subject, but this clear-eyed depiction is a welcome antidote.      (Darcy Paquet)