Spellbound

Jo-goo is a street magician whose act does not work and whom nobody watches. One day he sees a girl called Yeo-ri in the audience and brings her into the show. Yeo-ri really does see ghosts, which is why nobody comes near her and why she has lived alone for years. Jo-goo does not know that and wants to spend time with her. Hwang In-ho directs, in his first feature. Son Ye-jin plays Yeo-ri and Lee Min-ki plays Jo-goo. The idea is to run two genres at once. The same scene is built as romantic comedy and as horror: during a date something is standing behind them, she sees it and he does not. Genre mixing is common in Korean cinema, but this places the mixture directly inside the relationship. Loneliness is the actual subject. Yeo-ri's sight is not a gift but a reason for isolation; nobody touches her, nobody stays, and the film uses the horror as the equivalent of that solitude. Son Ye-jin was among the best known actors in Korea at the time, and the part sits outside the romantic comedy image she had until then. It did well commercially in Korea and is often cited as an example of genre mixing. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean romantic comedy and films with a light element of horror. Who it is not for: too mild if you came for horror, too dark if you came for the comedy. The film is caught between them.