Paradise Murdered (DVD) (Malaysia Version) DVD Region 3

The Plot
South-Korea,1986: in one of the mainland harbors a severed head is found in the water. It is assumed the head originates from Geukrakdo, a small nearby island whose name means "Paradise Island" (although pronouncing it with the accent on a different syllable makes it "Evil Island"). The police take a look but find a creepy setting. All 17 men, women and children known to live on Geukrakdo have disappeared and there is plenty evidence of violence. What happened in this place, voted "Best Remote Island To Live On" two years in a row?

Flashbacks show that a few days earlier, after a party, a gambling disagreement leads to a brutal murder. As the assumed killer has disappeared and the island's only radio has been sabotaged, all inhabitants of Geukrakdo become (rightfully) more stressful. Before you know it the people start talking about the "Curse of the Chaste Woman", a widow starved to death a century earlier, whose ghost is supposedly still roaming the island searching for food. Even more inexplicable are the bags of money that keep appearing and disappearing. Then the next body is found…

Now everybody just needs to sit tight and wait for 48 hours till the police arrives. What could possibly go wrong in the meantime...

The Movie
If the plot description seemed somewhat vague, that's entirely on purpose. This movie can quite easily be spoiled by explaining "what happened", something I hopefully avoided. Unfortunately it makes reviewing this film, and me mentioning what I liked or not liked, a lot harder. So I can't say a lot more except that writer-director Kim Han-Min has created a nifty conceit in the story, which allows for explaining away all inconsistencies. It's not so radical and outlandish as say The Matrix or Sixth Sense, but any complaints about bad acting, sudden strange behavior, or even hallucinations can be easily dismissed with a "that's because of...".

As conceits go, it's a good one; I didn't feel cheated or annoyed by any obvious impossibilities. And no, even though you have the "Best Remote Island To Live On Two Years in a Row" bit, it's not the Korean version of Hot Fuzz either. It's quite a clever one, so "Well done!" I say. But…

The problem I have with the conceit is how it's finally revealed to the audience. As the movie is now, the police bookends the story on the island. You see them at work without a clue at the start, and somewhat more knowledgeable at the end. The deleted scenes however show that a lot of footage had been shot of the police figuring out for themselves what happened, independent from the story told in flashback on the island. I get the impression that this approach gave the game away too soon though and made the puzzle far too easy to unravel. But with these scenes gone, the remaining clues are so vague and seemingly insignificant that the reveal now has become almost impossible to predict and comes a bit out of left field. It's not an easy one either: you get hit by tons of necessary exposition all of a sudden.

So you get the impression that this movie was hurt by the severe changes made afterwards. Nevertheless it's a fun ride. Sometimes even a bit too funny: (c)rude comedy is inserted on numerous occasions in the first half - for example all murder theories are shown with the victims still alive and the murderer being a clumsy ninja, but it leaves the movie after a while. This can be explained because the movie becomes too gritty for it (the children on the island are not automatically exempt from the violence) but it makes the inclusion earlier on rather baffling. Still, Paradise Murdered manages to portray successfully the weird combination of freedom and claustrophobia you get when living in such a small community, and seeing it all fall apart is interesting to say the least.

The movie looks very good, making nice use of the location of the island, which is basically a steep rock with some fields and houses peppered on it. Acting varies between good and cartoonish, which for some characters is explainable, for others less so. Park Hae-Il, known as the revolutionary uncle who is good at everything except throwing Molotov-cocktails in The Host, plays the role closest to what can be called a lead, the island's doctor who tries to keep everyone from panicking. It's a very restrained role and that makes it hard to sympathize with him, because he's enigmatic enough to be suspect. Park keeps it from getting too obviously creepy or too obviously a red herring, which can't have been easy. Praise also goes to Park Sol-Mi who portrays the island's Resident Drunk, and Sung Ji-Ru as the teacher who obviously sports a crush for the doctor.

Conclusion
All in all, Paradise Murdered is a flawed but nice thriller. It may not hit all the goals it wanted to achieve, but at the same time it's not pretentious either, and as pure entertainment it's difficult to find faults with this. Recommended.

by Aardvark - Twitchfilm.net