Movie Review: Brainwave

by refresh_daemon

While I wasn’t fully satisfied with the direction or the production aspects of the film My Girlfriend Is an Agent (a.k.a. Level 7 Civil Servant), I can’t argue that the comedy had quite a few amusing moments and certainly wasn’t surprised to find that it managed to become one of the most popular Korean comedies in 2009, taking in over four million admissions that year. Curious about the director’s impact on the film, I decided to go back a couple years and check out Shin Tae-ra’s debut film, Brainwave, an independent low-budget science fiction thriller released in 2006. Despite some of the good ideas present, the storytelling and direction mark a highly amateur effort, one that, if cleaned up and stretched out, could have made a decent pilot for a television series, but in film form is highly flawed.

The problems were evident from the film’s start, as an unnamed man flees another unnamed man before meeting an untimely demise. It’s a pretty common setup for thrillers and procedurals, but the photography, awash in soft filters and muted palette, give the film a hazy atmosphere not befitting the gritty and grisly scene. Furthermore, as soon as we see the gratuitous upward reaction shot once our unnamed man encounters his pursuer, it’s almost like watching a student film. Given that it was director Shin’s first feature, perhaps that’s not so surprising, but the over-direction distracts throughout the course of the film and the attempts to mask the low budget nature of the production manage to draw more attention to it.

At least the story had promise. The lead character is Jeon Juno (Kim Do-yoon), who makes a living drawing one-minute portraits in a park and is attended to by his somewhat protective girlfriend, Han Jenny (Jang Se-yoon). Meanwhile, a series of murders where the victims were beaten without being touched has the local detectives (Son Ho-seung and Son Byeong-wook) stumped, but when local extortionist Doubly (Nam Yoon-myung) gives Juno a hard knock to the head, he displays some potent telekinetic powers and hears some voices in his head, drawing him into the case and the path of mysterious killer (Hwang Choon-ha), and casting some doubt on Jenny’s intentions.

That sounds pretty good right? Well, the flaws are all in storytelling and execution. You see, the ninety-two minute film is full of chase scenes, most of which hardly make any sense. The first with Juno has him running away from Doubly and his thugs, who he just knocked out cold with a display of paranormal powers, none of which seem to faze the thugs, but he still gets away. This leaves the whole extended montage seeming rather pointless. Also, no such chase scene is directed with enough continuity that it ever feels like the pursuer even has a chance of catching the runner, sucking the suspense out of the film.

There is also a scene that tells the detectives to back out of the investigation since the Korean national investigative agency is taking it over. Absolutely nothing comes of this. We never hear about this again and it has no impact on the film whatsoever.

Furthermore, many of the film’s action scenes are filled with over-direction and over-editing, with heavy usage of split screen which ends up breaking suspension of disbelief by calling attention to the actual frame of the film, but also serving to confuse the viewers in the actual action of the film. What’s more, in one particular chase sequence, the killer uses his powerful telekinesis to keep a car from getting away, giving rise to the question: If he can drag a car, why does he even bother to chase anyone when he can just pull them all towards himself? The film never answers that question.

And these story logic issues around the inconsistent application of the film’s paranormal powers further take the viewer out of the film. When you watch Juno turn on and off cars or throw people around instinctively, or even knock a gun out of the way of firing just moments before, it’s absolutely silly to watch him choose not to duel the killer’s power directly with his, leading to a baffling course of events at the film’s finale. Instead, it feels like the scenes were either not thought out very well or simply forced with stupefying character choices. A character of the degree of power that the killer displays would simply have no reason to chase or flee unless somehow overwhelmed in number, which doesn’t happen in Brainwave.

The story also runs pretty melodramatic, not taking enough advantage of the mystery and intrigue elements that it sets up. Part of that might be because of the time limitations of the feature length format and the story presented had a lot of promise as a television series, as a kind of science fiction procedural-thriller-mystery. Instead, it tries to make some sort of dramatics with Juno’s relationship with Jenny (not at all related to the Korean teen pregnancy film Jenny, Juno), but doesn’t establish their relationship and potential betrayal enough for it to make an impact, except for a cheap stab at emotional manipulation at the film’s end.

The film’s super low budget production values might also be anathema to many. Shot on digital video, the production overcompensates a little with the filters and the lighting, creating an effect similar to television series, except without the polish, pulling the film’s aesthetic away from the theoretically darker subject matter. But other than the overcompensation, the production values otherwise didn’t bother me much, being used to watching lower budget independent film.

All this rolls together to make for a less than enthralling watch, frequently taking me out of the film due to my disbelief at what I was seeing. That’s not to say that I don’t see the potential in the film’s premise. The setup for the film is great, but the amateur over-direction, poor story writing, and often exasperating storytelling never live up to that potential. Even the film’s score and sound design are distracting in their application, even early on when Jenny and Juno are given a meet cute and the performances are similarly forced at moments like these.

Director Shin had gotten better by the time he steered My Girlfriend Is an Agent, but some of these flaws in directing and storytelling appear to have followed him to even that film. The later film’s success ultimately doesn’t seem to be indicative of the director’s talents in particular, although he did end up getting another film out of it with 2012’s Runway Cop, which appears to have a similar setup to Miss Congeniality. And with so many flaws in Brainwave’s making, especially in that the film disappoints on the promise of its premise, I cannot recommend it except to academics and historians with an interest in low budget Korean filmmaking. 4/10.

Note: Brainwave is available on Korean Region 3 DVD with English subtitles from Korean retailers like Aladin.