A Tale of Two Sisters

You can’t ignore horror from the East. “J-horror” and “K-horror” have changed the landscape of horror movies in the past ten years; films like Ringu and Ju-On flaunted an intensely creepy atmosphere that more recent Hollywood horror attempted to exploit. With the slew of Asian films coming out within a small frame of time, it’s easy for one that’s truly worth watching to slip under the radar. A Tale of Two Sisters features a lot of the conventions that we’ve come to expect from this subgenre, but there’s more to this Korean film than just a spooky ghost story.

I’m actually a bit torn writing about this one, since I don’t consider it straight-up horror. It’s got definite horror elements - an old house that creaks and groans at night, ghosts that crawl with disjointed movements, some jump scares here and there – but A Tale of Two Sisters is definitely a psychological thriller and drama before anything else.

The film itself is allegedly based on an old ghost story, “Janghwa Hongreyon-jon,” though not much is adapted. In the story, the two sisters are ghosts who kill whoever dares enter their accursed home, whereas in the movie, they are less murderous and incorporeal and more just two sisters. They depend on one another a great deal: Su-Yeong is taciturn and non-confrontational; Su-mi acts as her protector. The two move in to their father’s massive lakeside home, clasping hands tightly as their stepmother, Eun-joo, greets them with forced enthusiasm.

The house’s aesthetics help create the atmosphere: The deep reds and blues; stark color contrasts; the gothic-goes-to-japan architecture - it’s all very lovely in daylight. But when bedtime rolls around and shadows creep in, the empty house feels grim and foreboding - like Korea’s answer to The Shining. Su-Yeong’s door opens, creaking louder and louder (this is the loudest creaking door in existence). She pulls the sheets over her face as pale fingers inch out of the darkness. Down the hall, Su-mi hears a shambling at the foot of her bed. She peeks to see a white figure dragging her body across the floor. With a jerk, the figure pulls herself up the bed post and positions herself, hair obscuring her face and mouth agape, over a cowering Su-mi. Su-Yeong crawls into bed with her sister, and after these horrific visions, the two sleep together. The entire cast of Predator would be kept awake by that sort of thing, but they manage to go to sleep.

As the story progresses, Eun-joo’s actions become increasingly excessive: she constantly and viciously harasses Su-Yeong and has an outburst of complete insanity at a dinner party. All the while the father is distant, never uttering a word of his wife’s bizarre behavior. The characters motivations and many plot details are a mystery; hints are dropped with clever directing, but the film is intended to keep the viewer in the dark until its closing moments. Although it may get confusing, and though there is a supernatural element, ultimately everything falls into place.

In the end though, you won’t walk away from this movie feeling scared or grossed-out or any of those other feelings you probably associate with horror movies – A Tale of Two Sisters is tragic. It’s gorgeous, artful, atmospheric and none of the things that you would expect a horror film to be. It definitely should not be passed up. (If you have something against foreign movies or subtitles, you can watch the Hollywood remake, The Uninvited, though I wouldn’t because I hear it’s a real turd of a movie.)

-Also: The main theme fits the tone of the movie perfectly.