Editorials
Hoon-jung Park’s ‘The Witch: Subversion’ Brings Visceral Twist to a Superpowered Tale [VOD Picks]
If the umpteenth delay of The New Mutants bums you out, or you’re just plain in the mood for something new on VOD, there’s an easy recommendation that scratches that itch for a genre-twist to superpowered origin stories – The Witch: Subversion. Now out on both Blu-ray and VOD, this thriller hailing from South Korea offers mystery, suspense, visceral action, and an insane amount of bloodshed. In other words, if you like your superhero stories entertaining and chock full of violence, this one delivers the goods.
The cold open shows mysterious remnants of a massacre at an unknown facility, and it’s followed by the suspenseful pursuit of a young girl, Ja-yoon. She escapes and eventually collapses at the edges of a farm owned by a lonely, older couple. Cut to ten years later. Ja-yoon has since been adopted by the couple, with no memory at all of her former life. She’s grown into a well-adjusted teenager that excels at everything she pursues, so when the teen nails an audition for a reality TV singing show, it attracts dangerous people from her forgotten past. Her ordinary life turns upside-down, and everything she holds dear hangs in the balance.
First and foremost, the one thing to know going in is that this was written and directed by Hoon-jung Park, the screenwriter behind the excellent and disturbing I Saw the Devil. While The Witch: Subversion is nowhere near as bleak, it does have a biting edge of darkness to it. The facility that Ja-yoon fled from as a child has been searching for her ever since. They have zero qualms about killing or torturing anyone to reclaim her. Many of those after Ja-yoon are gleefully sadistic about hunting their prey. Bone-crunching, bloody violence ensues.
Unlocking Ja-yoon’s past is the driving mystery of the story, but it mainly keeps to familiar plot beats. Ja-yoon is powerfully telekinetic, a result of whatever experimentation the facility performed on her as a child. There’s plenty of information given, especially for those well versed in this type of origin tale, to fill in the blanks before the narrative unveils them. Even still, The Witch: Subversion is heavily stylized with slick production value and well-executed brawls. It’s how the story unfolds that makes this so much fun to watch, especially in the Grand Guignol-style finale.
The film’s subtitle does eventually come into play, in a pleasantly surprising sort of way, and leaves with a tease for a continuation – this is only a “Part 1,” it must be noted. Usually, dangling a kind of loose thread cliffhanger to set up the next entry would be a detriment; focus on doing a self-contained story first. That’s precisely what Hoon-jung Park does, however. The Witch: Subversion is robust enough to stand on its own as a stand-alone story, but there’s still plenty of lingering mystery and a rooting interest in Ja-yoon to make you want to immediately sign up to see where her story goes next. Da-mi Kim‘s performance as Ja-yoon goes a long way, as well, easily engendering audience sympathy for the character’s increasingly complex layers.
Who knows when we’ll finally be able to see The New Mutants, a genre twist that sees young mutants grappling with their powers while held against their will in a facility. But The Witch: Subversion fits that bill pretty closely. Ja-yoon’s struggle to uncover her past and the extent of her powers presents a familiar superhero origin story, but with a South Korean action-thriller twist. From the mind behind I Saw the Devil, no less. Meaning a highly entertaining film that brings savage action sequences and the kind of splatter-filled violence you don’t usually see in the teen superhero fare we get in American cinemas.
The best part is that this one’s available to watch right now.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
You must be logged in to post a comment.