Summary
Terrific performances and gorgeous photography are the highlights of this tense cat and mouse serial killer thriller with a unique twist.
Filmmaker Won Shin-yun has gained a solid reputation in Korean horror and thriller circles with films like Seven Days (2007) and The Suspect (2013). With MEMOIR OF A MURDERER (살인자의 기억법), he returns to the high tension genres with a tale of two serial killers, one that gets incredibly wrapped up in its own pretzel logic.
Based on the novel by Kim Young-Ha, it follows the aging veterinarian Byeong-Soo (Sol Kyung-Gu). Seventeen years earlier, he ended his career as a vigilante serial killer following an accident. Now with vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s setting in, those memories are fading, at least until he gets into a car accident with policeman Min Tae-Joo (Kim Nam-Gil). Immediately recognising him as another killer, Byeong-Soo battles to keep Tae-Joo away from his daughter Eun-Hee (Seol Hyun), but doesn’t trust his own memory to do what’s necessary.
Sympathetic serial killers are all the rage, from Hannibal Lecter to Dexter. Hwang Jo-Yoon and Won Shin-Yeon garner that sympathy with a narrative proximity to Byeong-Soo, via voice over and flashes to his abused childhood. Yet just like Memento and other films of its ilk, he is an unreliable narrator due to his short-term memory issues. It’s on this basis that Won builds much of the film’s tension.
The mystery doesn’t just come from whether or not Tae-Joo is actually the killer, but how much of what we’re seeing is genuine. Tae-Joo could be spending his entire time gaslighting an increasingly senile old man. On the other hand, we could be witnessing Byeong-Soo’s old habits rising to the surface as his mental defences begin to slip. Plenty of clues are dropped that either could be the case, and if the film trips over itself at any stage, it’s because it does a thorough job of dramatic misdirection.
Sol Kyung-Gu is magnificent in the lead role, a cutting performance that turns on a dime from doddering to ferocious. Likewise, it’s plausible that star Kim Nam-Gil is either a killer or just a nice guy with an unfortunate policeman’s haircut (as Eun-Hee puts it).
Choi Young-Hwan’s (Pandora) photography is simply gorgeous, elevating much of the subject matter out of its typical genre aesthetics. Whether it is the green backdrop of a bamboo forest, moody overhead highway shots, or the stark contrast of a blood-filled bathtub against white tiles, Choi ‘s style is a formidable force.
MEMOIR OF A MURDERER quite literally keeps you guessing right up until the last snow-filled frame, which is a double-edged sword. It’s a white-knuckle ride as the film escalates to an extended confrontation between the three leads, but also one that has a few twists that may not hold up to closer examination. Nevertheless, it’s a top-notch thriller that is guaranteed to keep audiences engaged and thinking after the credits have rolled.
