A Werewolf Boy

At the end of the sixties an ill girl moves with her family to a country house for the air. In the yard they find a boy who cannot speak, has not been washed and knows nothing. She teaches him to eat, to wait and to be around people. Then it becomes clear what he is. The subject is not the monster but making someone a promise you cannot keep. At the film's centre is a simple command that is still in force fifty years later; the narrative loads all its weight onto that one detail and returns it in full at the end. The form is deliberately soft and nostalgic. Rural landscape, sixties objects, warm light. There is little violence and it is brief; the film never enters horror. It was a large commercial success in Korea. With more than six and a half million admissions it became the most watched Korean melodrama to that date, and it held first place at the box office for four consecutive weeks, pushing the Twilight film then in release into second. Song Joong-ki plays the boy and Park Bo-young the girl. Jo Sung-hee directs. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean melodrama and fantastical love stories. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by frequent emotional prompting; the film does it openly in the last half hour.