The Quiet Family

 

A South Korean black comedy directed by Kim Jee-woon, who also directed I Saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad, The Weird. It's an entertainingly grim farce, filmed almost like a horror film with a thick streak of dark humour.

A family leaves the city and opens an isolated lodge in the mountains. Named ‘The Misty Inn’, the family works hard and hopes to become successful, but weeks go by without them receiving a single guest. As time goes on the mixture of ongoing failure and desperation starts to turn the family strange.

One night they finally receive a guest. The family all become excited, thinking this is the end of their bad luck. But overnight the guest kills himself with the death looking almost like murder. Not wanting to add bad publicity to their already failing lodge, the family doesn’t report the suicide but instead bury the man in the woods, hoping to forget about it. From then on the lodge starts to receive more guests, most of whom invariably die, causing the family to frantically cover up the evidence. As the film progresses things continue to get darker as the corpses begin to pile up with the lodge receiving visits from sexual predators, undercover policemen and assassins.

It’s a darkly humorous farce, with things continuing to get darker as the family continues to cover up the onslaught of dead bodies.

The characters are all fairly broad strokes, often with a quirk or two. And, strangely, none of them are particularly likeable – you won’t really be rooting for any of them. Most are stubborn or lazy, stupid or aggressive, but maybe that’s the point – they’re normal, fallible people (and a dysfunctional family unit). The focus isn’t really on any one character (though younger sister Mina does narrate at times) so you never get too much of an insight into any of them. The film stars some actors who would go on to become big stars in Korea, including Song Kang-ho (The Host) as the son and Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) as the uncle.

The surly patriarch takes charge quickly and is really freaking eager to bury some bodies. The second they find the first corpse he’s almost instantly prepared with plastic bags and shovels, and after that he practically has his burying equipment on standby. The matriarch is happy to listen to her husband and offers no objections. The uncle is somewhat lazy but seems to have a few more morals than the rest. The son is stupid, spending his time trying to peek in on guests having sex. The two daughters are selfish, lazy and offer no help whatsoever. As a family unit they’re a mess, but covering up murders and burying bodies becomes something that brings them all together. There’s a lot of humour to be had in the simple situation, and the film milks it well.

 

What the film lacks is a traditional plot structure. It doesn't really have a big climax – while the situation builds and gets more bizarre, it never really blows over or has a resolution. The ending is somewhat vague as well, leaving unanswered questions. That being said, as an odd finale it sort of brings events (and the family) full circle.

This is a true black comedy, offering a darkly farcical situation and seeing how grim it can go with it.  There’s a real commitment to the dark humour, as there are no real moments of levity or lighter humour – everything is as dark as it can be. That’s not to say that it isn’t funny – it is, with a lot of humorous misunderstandings (a scene where the son and uncle are chasing leaving guests through the woods to ask them a simple question is made hilarious by the fact that, unwittingly, they’re brandishing hatchets and cleavers). It’s that the commitment to being a black comedy does mean that if you don’t enjoy dark humour you probably won’t get much out of it. It's almost like a horror movie.

As with Kim Jee-woon’s other films, the cinematography is top notch. It’s shot like a horror movie, with a creepy atmosphere in the lodge and the cold woods outside. Most scenes are framed in horror terms, with dark shadows and angles that give things a menacing air which leads to more humour. The choice of music is odd but strangely fitting, keeping with the director’s other works. There's a selection of classical tunes mixed with what sounds like Mexican flavoured hip hop and some Partridge Family songs; it’s an odd mix but it works.

The Quiet Family is an entertaining movie, though it is strange. It’s a dark comedy in every sense of the meaning, and also a sort of weird peek at a dysfunctional family unit that will neither break apart nor change, for better and worse. It’s also a really interesting film to watch in terms of Kim Jee-woon’s career. It’s his first feature film and showcases a lot of the stylistic and cinematic flair and dark humour and themes that have come to characterise his later works.