Midnight

A Korean thriller that takes place over one night in Seoul. Kyung-mi works at a call centre. She is deaf; she works on a sign language interpreting line and lives with her mother. Her mother is deaf too. At home they speak in sign and outside they communicate by phone. One night they leave work late. They park the car and a sound comes from a side street. Kyung-mi finds a woman on the ground. She has been stabbed, she is bleeding, and the attacker is still there. Do-shik sees her. From there the film is a chase. Streets, a police station, a hospital, a car park and an apartment block. Do-shik's advantage is simple. Kyung-mi cannot shout, cannot call anyone, cannot speak; he can easily persuade whoever is around. In one scene they go to the police. He introduces himself as her brother and explains the situation; nobody listens to her. What the narrative is interested in is not murder but not being heard: all the film's tension comes from a woman's effort to make herself understood. The sound design is the narrative's instrument. In some scenes the sound cuts out entirely and the audience hears only as much as she does. There is a second line. The victim's brother is looking for his sister, and the two lines join at the end. The killer's ordinariness is deliberate. He does not look frightening; he is polite, well dressed, and convincing for exactly that reason. The last section runs a little long and the narrative rebuilds its tension several times. Jin Ki-joo, Wi Ha-jun, Park Hoon and Kil Hae-yeon are in the cast. Kwon Oh-seung wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes fast Korean thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic; the police behaviour loses credibility in several places and the ending goes on too long.