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Film: Murder Death Koreatown
Year: 2020
Director:
Writer:
Starring:
Review:
This was a film that I got the chance to see a Press Screener for it. The person is from Audience.House who reached out to me named Jobi B. and provided the link with very limited information. To just get into this, the synopsis is after his neighbor’s real life murder, an unemployed man goes down the rabbit hole investigating what he believes to be a conspiracy.
Much like the synopsis states, we begin with a man who is unnamed noticing that there’s blood on the sidewalk. He has been alerted to this by police presence as there was a murder in the apartment building next door. The man filming gets the medical examiner as they’re coming out of the building, just from a distance.
This man lives with his girlfriend who really doesn’t want him to look into what happened, as it isn’t his job and it should be left to the police. He is also unemployed so this makes it problematic. No one will speak with him, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing.
He gets desperate for answers and starts to notice odd things. There are these Korean people that are holding up signs about Jesus. There are also writings that are dubbed ‘The Pastor’s Story’. No one from the apartment building will talk to him aside from a young Asian man from Florida. He’s finally told to stay away from the property by its landlord and that limits him more.
The man starts to talk to some of the homeless people in the area, seeking out a psychic, just anyone that will lead him toward something. Everyone keeps telling him to give it up, but he descends into madness to find the truth. The problem though, is there really a story here and a conspiracy like he thinks? Or is this just a man who is unstable descending into a manic state?
Now I didn’t know a whole lot coming into this and that wasn’t necessarily by design. For me, I do like to come in blind and allow the movie to give all of the information that I need. I will then do a bit a research if I need to. This movie is interested that according to the press materials and the Internet Movie Database, the writer/director are unknown. There are no actors listed and the materials just state that the editor of this footage wanted to stay anonymous at this time, going just by ‘K Anon’.
I have to admit, I find this to be pretty effective. This feels a lot like The Blair Witch Project on a smaller stage. They did more to present that as really happening and a lot of that came with the budget. The credits of the movie are stating that all of the proceeds are going to finding out the person who made this movie as they don’t even know. The only thing they have to go with is the footage and some pictures of what the person looked like. What I find effective about this was what I think the explanation is here.
For me there was a love/hate relationship with the main character. He has been unemployed for some time and his life was losing purpose. His girlfriend has a job and is supporting them. This murder and the little bit of mystery that he discovers drives him. I can connect with that, because before getting into doing reviews, I was lost and quite depressed. When everyone keeps telling him to give up and go back to the real world, he doesn’t want to. He has to believe there is something more here to give him purpose. He states this could be the more important to happen to him so by going back to normalcy is just that, taking away his purpose.
This movie is narrated by him as he’s filming and I have to say, I like how the information is presented. I never got bored and I think it was effective to keep this shorter with an 80 minute runtime. The way things are filmed and framed made me think that he could be telling the truth. The fact of the matter, I think we have someone who is mentally unstable and is making connections to things that aren’t really there. Everyone is telling him to give up and he continues on. The ending made me question things and I like that unnerving feeling it gave me.
I thought the acting actually is really good here in the fact that it feels amateur. There were times I was cringing, but I think that adds to it though. These are a person that is just being randomly interviewed by someone who is unstable so you can’t trust him. The main guy though I thought was really good in this. He drives this and the lack of information about himself drives the mystery as well.
To maintain this sense of realism I like the simplicity of the effects. There are really not a lot of them which helps. I’m glad that everything was done practical to maintain that sense. There are some creepy things done with eyes and just the way things are framed. The cinematography is shakey, but that helps there as well. This really does feel like an amateur who is filming this and doesn’t necessarily know what they’re doing.
The last thing to cover would be the soundtrack, which mostly is ambient noise. We get the sounds around him as he’s walking around and interviewing people. There was music that really started to bother me periodically, but seeing that someone ‘legit’ found the footage and edited it, it’s not an issue for me. They’re making it more entertaining to get viewers to help get to the bottom of this story.
Now with that said, this is an interesting piece of cinema that is kind of difficult to do. I think that we have an interesting story of an unstable person thinking there’s a conspiracy around him. There’s some social relevance to it as well. I’ve felt similar things to the main character, just not to that level. The acting and cinematography feels amateur, but it really should. Coupling all of that with the ambient soundtrack, it fits. The music in it doesn’t bother me as it is edited by someone else. If you don’t like found footage, I would avoid this. If you do like it though, I’d recommend giving this a viewing. It has a feel of a Blair Witch Project except in the city, but with the amount of effort put in to hide information in this day and age really was enjoyable. I would rate this as good movie and found it to be quite interesting if you couldn’t tell.
My Rating: 8 out of 10