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.
Found footage movies rely on immersion and a particular kind of suspension of disbelief in order to scare viewers, so it stands to reason that playing along with the “kayfabe” of it all is necessary for these movies to be effective. However, despite being something of a purist when it comes to in-universe recordings, I’ve come to accept that traditional productions can benefit from the occasional injection of found footage thrills.
For instance, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation makes genius use of the analog gimmick in order to trap us in the titular rooms alongside our main characters before effortlessly switching back to a more cinematic language. In honor of these dynamic films that manage to combine the best of both worlds, today I’d like to share six other hybrid horror movies that successfully incorporate found footage into their scares!
For the purposes of this list, “hybrid” horror movies are defined as any flick that shifts between diegetic recordings and traditional filming techniques for a significant amount of time (or at least for pivotal scenes).
As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own hybrid favorites if you think a particularly freaky one was missed.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. The Last Broadcast (1998)
Internet critics may have overstated the influence that Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler’s The Last Broadcast had on The Blair Witch Project, but the found footage subgenre still owes a huge debt to this underrated piece of avant-garde filmmaking. However, while the movie sets itself up as a documentary about the disappearance of a group of cryptid-hunters attempting to track down the Jersey Devil, things take a darker and much more grounded turn towards the final act.
I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say that the jarring shift in perspective actually helps to sell the idea that everything we’ve seen before the finale was an attempt at using filmmaking to manipulate the public perception of a “real” incident.
Not bad for a movie with a $900 budget!
4. Cam (2018)
When you consider just how much the internet affects our daily lives, it’s strange that we don’t see Screenlife elements pop up in more movies these days. For instance, Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber’s highly underrated Cam only works as a freaky parable about online sex-work because it masterfully balances Madeline Brewer’s intimate moments with highly immersive segments within cyberspace.
While one might argue that the entire film could have been produced as a Screenlife experience, the hybrid approach allows the filmmakers to explore our main character’s life beyond the screens – with the duality of modern human existence actually becoming a recurring theme in the story.
3. Banshee Chapter (2013)
Most of H.P. Lovecraft’s popular stories were told in the epistolary format (where the text is presented as an in-universe compilation of letters or personal notes), so it makes sense that a spiritually faithful adaptation of his work would incorporate elements from the modern-day equivalent to epistolary fiction – found footage!
That’s why Blair Erickson’s Banshee Chapter is such an effective scare-fest, as this hybrid adaptation of From Beyond -retold through a conspiratorial lens as it references MK-Ultra and even secretive numbers stations- immerses viewers in a mind-bending tapestry of Cosmic Horror that blurs the line between fiction and reality.
2. The Deep House (2019)
The underwater setting does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Deep House, with the film being especially uncomfortable if you’re already scared of tight spaces and being deprived of oxygen. However, even the universally unsettling elements of the flick only work because the POV often shifts into claustrophobic footage courtesy of our main characters’ GoPro cameras.
Telling the story of a couple of YouTubers who encounter a haunted house at the bottom of an artificial lake while vacationing in France, The Deep House’s first-person exploration sequences contain some of the film’s scariest moments. In fact, I’d argue that the movie didn’t even need ghosts, as becoming trapped in the titular House already sounds like a fate worse than death.
1. Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
My personal favorite instance of filmmakers successfully managing to combine traditional cinematography with POV filmmaking, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, is proof that the two formats can co-exist if the right story comes along.
After all, what better way to conclude a mockumentary all about reality getting increasingly more cinematic than by ditching the found footage gimmick altogether during the finale? Not only does this shift in presentation work on a conceptual level, but it also elevates Behind The Mask into a proper Slasher, which is probably why we’re so excited for that long-overdue sequel!
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