DERANGED (Yeon-ga-si) DVD (2012)
SYNOPSIS: At the break of dawn on Tancheon road, a gruesome dead body in just skin and bones is found. Soon after, there are dead bodies everywhere where water can reach, and anomie-stricken Korea is in a state of complete chaos. With a short incubation period and 100% fatality rate, the parasitic mutant hairworms brainwash their human hosts to find water and kill themselves, and the number of the infected is growing out of control. To contain the situation, the government sets up an emergency response center and quarantines the infectees. Jae-hyuk is a busy salesman at a pharmaceutical company. His wife and children are infected by the mutant hairworm, and he struggles to find a cure for his family. In the midst of disaster, Jae-hyuk’s brother Jae-pil, who has been investigating a strange case of mass deaths, finds a lead on the mutant hairworm chaos, and two brothers dig out the truth.
MOVIE REVIEW:
A huge hit when it was released last summer in Korea, Deranged is an epidemic thriller that effectively showcased the greed of man is much evil than the disgusting creatures it unleashed.
The story by director and writer Park Jeong-woo opens and focused on a family man, Jae-hyeok who works as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. Rendered in dire financial straits by investment, Jae-hyeok works hard to provide for his wife and two young kids. His brother, Jae-pil on the other hand works as a lowly-cop and has a hot, capable girlfriend Yeon-joo who works as a research scientist. Then comes the unexpected, numerous emaciated bodies start to appear floating in river beds all around the country. When the government realizes it’s a mutated parasite that is residing in human bodies, panic ensued with victims increasing by the minute and that includes Jae-hyeok’s family.
Assuming Deranged to be somewhat similar to Bong Joon-ho’s The Host is understandable. For a start, both use the viewpoint of one family to showcase the side effects caused by a major catastrophe. The inability of the government to efficiently control the matter and the immediate social issues faced is greatly highlighted here by the director’s confidence in juggling simultaneous storylines. Cleverly, the approach to let two ordinary citizens take matters to their own hand once again allows the audience to root for their success in getting the remedy for the family as the third act focused strongly on the two brothers’ determination in uncovering a shady pharmaceutical scheme.
While Bong delivers generous amounts of CG monster mayhem, Park Jeong-woo is satisfied in delivering off-camera grisly effects in general and even the horsehair worms which lived in the intestines of their hosts did not receive much of a close-up. Unless you are a true-blue horror fan who wished to see worms bursting out of the victims’ mouths and backside, you get the goose bumps watching the worms wriggling in medical tank alone and for me, that’s genuinely creepy enough. As the parasites controlled the victims’ brains in its last stage, scenes of the victims throwing themselves into rivers, canals, swimming pools and fountains send more shivers down the spine (reason being the parasites can only live on water).
The generally unknown cast (featuring not a single well-known K-pop singer as far as I know) did an absolutely convincing job though the few scenes that showed the mother and her young children in a quarantined emergency response center detour slightly towards melodramatic territory. Overall, Deranged delivers enough chills and twists to warrant it a box-office success. Expecting it to be more than a no-brainer creature fest will leave you disappointed though.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
NIL
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Visual and audio is plain serviceable. Those prefer higher-end quality sounding, top visual stuff should avoid.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD RATING :
Review by Linus Tee
