In July 2006 the South Korean government, in a trade agreement with the United States of America, halved the number of days dedicated to South Korean films being shown in their own domestic market. This went from 146 days to just 73. This had a significant impact on the types of films that would be made going forward. Whilst the world had come to embrace such daring turns as Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy or the mesmerising work of Bong Joon-ho, instead of having the room to try new and adventurous cinema. Gone were the days that brought us such odd gems as Save The Green Planet or I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK, now there was a much clearer focus, and that was profit. This was going to be achieved with much more audience-friendly with movies like The Thieves and My Girlfriend Is An Agent, and whilst the likes of the aforementioned Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho would be afforded their creative freedom due to the weight that their names carry internationally, it would be a while before international cinema audiences would find themselves having their attention pulled back to the Korean peninsular.
What has this got to do with the clumsily titled The Witch: Part Two? The Other One? Directly, nothing at all, but in the same breath, it has absolutely everything to do with it.
Before we get to that, a quick recap of where we are. In 2018 The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion was released. Its tale of a genetically mutated child with telekinetic powers may have been a tamer interpretation of a story told many times in the west, but the performances were solid, the action was brutal and there was enough of a catch to leave this viewer curious to see more. Then the pandemic happened.
The fact that any film or K-Drama can make an audience go from crying to laughing in the space of a few scenes time and time again is commendable, and whilst The Witch: Part 2 tries this throughout, it never quite lands right, but it does give it a good old try.
4 years later and we are back in the world of these freaks of science and nature as yet another child escapes from another laboratory following an attack. So far so “saw all this first time”, and therein lies the problem with The Witch: Part 2, it feels very much like a rehash of the first film, but this time with a bit more action and a much more uneven pace.
Just like the first time around though, the performances are great, as we have come to expect from everything coming out of South Korea. The fact that any film or K-Drama can make an audience go from crying to laughing in the space of a few scenes time and time again is commendable, and whilst The Witch: Part 2 tries this throughout, it never quite lands right, but it does give it a good old try.
Maybe it’s because I’ve come to expect more from Director Park Joon-hung (who has been in the big chair for such greats as New World, The Tiger: An Old Hunter’s Tale and V.I.P.), but this feels like a 2hr 20m retread just to introduce us to a new character, and although I am sure this will have a big explosive payoff down the line, there isn’t enough here to justify the time it takes to tell its story.
This isn’t to say that The Witch: Part 2 is a bad film, far from it, but it does tie into what was stated earlier, about the move to more commercial projects for South Korean cinema since the 2006 Korean Cinema quota slash, films such as this being the result of those decisions made all those years ago. Would we have got here anyway? Possibly, but not without a few more gems along the way. Instead, we are left with a perfectly adequate second instalment to a franchise that looks likely to be around for the foreseeable future, but let’s just hope we get a different story next time.
THE WITCH PART 2: THE OTHER ONE IS OUT NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS
