Memories of Murder: A Potent, Mysterious Korean Procedural

We, as a collective culture, are guilty of an addiction to the macabre. I am no exception to this fact, but nevertheless, I want to start this review by talking about our unhealthy obsession with dark and unseen truths. We are so drawn to these types of movies, movies about serial killers especially, because of a morbid curiosity in feeling the sense of danger inherent to these kinds of situations without actually putting ourselves in any kind of danger. We want to know hidden truths, but we're too scared to put ourselves in the crosshairs of anyone who might actually want to kill us to look for them. The inherent sense of mystery surrounding these kinds of movies doesn't help either. These movies dangle a question over us for two or so hours and then drop a revelation that is often equal parts repulsive and intriguing on our heads. We watch these movies because they hook us by asking a question at the start and then promising to answer it by the time the credits roll. We stay behind because a part of us just wants to know. And so, I raise a question to you. Would you still be interested if a movie like this didn't offer any easy answers, but only asked more difficult questions?

I'm serious, would you?

Memories of Murder, a Korean serial killer procedural by Bong Joon-Ho, director of Parasite, does not offer easy answers to us as the audience and is instead far more interested in asking hard questions. So, you may ask, what's the point of even watching it, then? Well, I tend to think that the best movies will make us think long and hard after the credits have rolled, and believe me when I say that Memories of Murder had me reaching for the extra question marks. It preys on our love of the darkness and our need for answers, and then instead of giving us easy answers and satisfying moralizing, just asks us more questions. In some ways, I felt like this movie was shaming me for being fascinated by its dark premise. And maybe I am fascinated by the macabre. But I'm also fascinated by a strong atmosphere, complex characters, and restrained storytelling, all of which are areas in which Memories of Murder excels. It's a police procedural that has an entirely different feel than any other police procedural I've ever seen. It's similar to other works foreign and domestic in some ways, consistently different in most others, but always enticing, even seductive.

Memories of Murder, a 2003 Korean thriller based on the infamous Hwaesong serial murders, follows three detectives named Park, Cho, and Seo Tae-Yoon as they rely on morally and ethically questionable tactics to catch a serial killer targeting women who walk through the tall grass on the outskirts of a small town.

From the very opening minutes, Memories of Murder hits a high point and then stays there throughout its entire runtime. Its title sequence isn't merely a title sequence and is used to effectively show us the life of Detective Park, a man who claims to be able to tell if a suspect is guilty or not just by looking into their eyes, an intriguing claim indeed. As for Cho, Park's detective partner, he's a meaner soul than Park, and the two make for a nice dynamic and play well off of each other in a classic good-cop-bad-cop (bad-cop-less-bad-cop?) way. The two are legitimately terrible people who will coerce confessions and start bar fights because they hit a roadblock in the case, and sometimes seem more interested in getting any answer than they do in the truth.

Assisting a strong and complicated sense of characterization is one of the most well-realized, atmospheric, and altogether thrilling environments I've seen in a movie this year. The small-town setting is an intriguing and unusual one for a serial killer thriller, and is utterly engrossing. I wrote down that on the level of visuals, Memories of Murder kind of looks like a green-tinged Se7en in Korea. I'm kind of proud of that quip, and I think I'm going to keep it. Other reviewers compared the movie to Zodiac, another one of Fincher's films, and I personally find myself disagreeing with that comparison, as the visual aesthetic of Zodiac is very clean, while Memories of Murder is conversely very dirty-looking and unglorified - a visual palette that goes well with the fact that this movie is restrained enough to avoid exploiting it's dark and sinister subject matter. It's grisly without being intentionally attractive, and ironically enough, its self-awareness and willingness to avoid acting like a big advertisement for the Hwaesong killings just ended up making it even more attractive to me than it would have otherwise been.

But that said, I can't say that some parts of this movie aren't legitimately terrifying, because that would be a lie. Memories of Murder, while a largely contemplative piece, has moments that are genuinely tense and really scary, and this helps the movie overcome some of its weaker aspects, namely the fact that this movie doesn't have much of a rising action, and rather sticks to a slow burn that grabs you with intrigue, much like a constantly simmering pot threatening to boil over at any time. The procedural nature of Memories of Murder may not be as strong as some of Jo-Hoon's other work, but neither does it allow much room for error. The film is simultaneously inevitable and yet unpredictable. We're marching towards something, something ever-shrouded in a dark, gloomy mystery so that we're never able to make out what exactly it is. But throughout, we're conditioned to know that whatever it is, it can't be good.

This isn't the type of movie where everyone rides off into the sunset with each other at the end, so if you're looking for a feel-good drama, stay as far away from this one as you can. But even if it might not be a pleasant watch, the climax of this movie is....just beautiful. In a strange way. I understand that the ending may frustrate some viewers, but the set-up and payoff used throughout Memories of Murder to great effect comes to a head at the end and combines with an intelligent approach to filmmaking that finally, at the very end of the movie, rears its head for all to see how effective it really is.

Sometimes, questions are more potent than answers, Memories of Murder understands this perfectly, and if you're coming into this movie needing answers, I'm going to put this simply, but sorry to disappoint you. But where it gives few answers, it asks wonderful questions instead and is darkly mysterious, richly atmospheric, and made me second-guess everything I thought I knew as the case developed. Its aesthetic is also incredibly well-researched, down to details such as the props team designing period and region-accurate fonts by hand and finding the same type of paper used in newspapers from that time. The mysteries of the film are tantalizingly few, elaborated upon just enough to keep our rapt attention, and yet kept mysterious enough to keep us guessing. Its procedural tone is simultaneously a blessing and a curse, keeping Memories of Murder moving along at a brisk pace, but occasionally preventing its highs from being as high as they could be. But make no mistake - it's not quite perfect, but this movie is a potent, first-rate thriller that preys wonderfully on the human need for answers by displaying for us the depths we sink to when we want to know things we may be better off not knowing at all.

Memories of Murder - 9/10

Deuteronomy 29:29