The Witness

Sang-hoon comes home at night and looks down from the window. A woman is being killed in the estate below. The killer looks up and their eyes meet. The man sees which flat he is in. Sang-hoon does not go to the police. He has a wife and daughter and a mortgage, and the residents do not want it known either; if it gets out the prices will fall. A neighbour puts up a notice asking for witnesses. The killer comes back to the estate and walks about like a resident. Sang-hoon goes on saying nothing. Cho Kyu-jang directs. Lee Sung-min plays Sang-hoon; Kim Sang-ho, Jin Kyung and Kwak Si-yang are in the cast. It is a South Korean production. The matter it treats is avoiding witness; the film is about calculation rather than fear. The narrative makes the residents complicit too; nobody wants the truth out. The killer is built as a figure without a past and the narrative gives him no reason. The tension is built through place; the estate, the car park and the stairwells are an enclosed space inside the narrative. The narrative shows the police as ineffective and takes institutional slowness as a subject. The film follows the known shape of Korean suspense. Its ending is violent and the resolution individual. Its limit is originality; the premise is familiar, the second half conventional, and the ending conventional. Who it is for: viewers who like Korean thrillers and suspense built among neighbours. Who it is not for: it is conventional, predictable, and the ending harsh.