The Knowing Reader: Prophecy Review – Life Becomes a Game in One-Note Korean Science Fiction | film

SStarring the actor (Ahn Hyo-seop) who voiced the bad guy in the main KPop boy band Demon Hunters, and one of the singers (Kim Ji-soo, aka Jisoo) from the real-life girl group Blackpink, this Korean sci-fi fantasy film seems very skewed towards youth in all respects. On the surface, it seems to be about a man named Kim Duk-ja (Ahn) who finds the web novel he’s been pursuing for years turning into reality. This means that the whole world becomes a game, as if everyone has been turned into players, forced to kill to survive, while suffering from CGI monsters and evil digital technologies. dokkaebi (Demons) that explain things when the rules change.

But beneath the surface, this movie is about gaining popularity, dealing with traumatic childhood experiences like being forced to hit your best friend and getting blisters, and building enough gumption to tell authority figures — your elders, your boss, the author of the book you’ve been a fan of for ages — that they’re bad.

Much of the action in the first hour takes place on a commuter train, which will remind some viewers of the superior zombie-themed feature Train to Busan. This comparison is diminished by the plethora of Ready Player One, Squid Game, and Super Mario Bros.: As Dok-ja and his new friends struggle to survive, the game’s extremely complex story involves collecting coins and then spending them on improving skills. Dok-ja’s friends include the beautiful co-worker Yoo Sang-ah (Chae Soo-bin), the nerdy elementary school boy Lee Gil-yeong (Kwon Eun-seong) who loses his beloved ant farm in the first clash, the come-to-life fictional soldier Lee Hyung-sung (Shin Seung-ho), and the cold-hearted Yoo Joong-hyuk (Lee Min-ho) who is the protagonist of the original novel. Web novel.

You would think, with all the chatter about novels becoming reality, etc., that this would be more fun with meta jokes, but no, the movie is pretty much one tone. Likewise, the monsters all look rather similar with various serpentine, dragon, and half-gorgonoid components mixed and matched as needed, and they all move with the same kind of ultra-smooth, squiggly motion generated by off-the-shelf CGI engines.