The Quiet Family (1998)

 

As it can be seen, since a while ago, my entries start to become more seldom. I've chosen to write now because I have stuff on my brain that doesn't let me sleep, but I'm not gonna throw that up on a public blog, especially a thematic one. The idea is that I don't know for how long I can keep it going, but I still hope that "the life flow" surrounding me to become more "peaceful" and to give me time and comfort to see a movie from beginning to an end without any related stress. For the current entry I made some time late in the night during last week, feeling the need for something without much substance only for moving the mind to other stuff than the usual lurking in my brain. So, a horror with some comedy in it, made in South Korea, seemed to be the perfect choice. It's a bit ironic what I've actually stumbled upon in "The Quiet Family", but getting over that the movie got to its purpose.

I've always been a bit circumspect about the Asian humor in dramas, thrillers or action movies. It's about the culture I suspect, because I don't know, for me is in general a bit too .. childish up to sometimes stupid (the classic example being Jackie Chan's Hong Kong early B series movies and others like that). Eventually I learned to accept it, as well as the over-dramatization of some scenes here and there (as I said, probably is culture related), and that because there are movies made in the East which actually wipe the floor with U.S. productions having ten times the budget at many chapters: story, subtlety, feeling, and even technical sometimes. All these are usually found in dramas or even action movies. But since the humor, is like I said, the piece that drives away an Asian production from perfection, I used to avoid the comedies made in that part of the world until now. I start to wonder if I'm not terribly wrong about that.

After this double intro, maybe I should talk about the movie. As I was saying it's a black comedy. The subject might not be 100% original (somehow it was familiar): a family buys a lodge somewhere in the mountains with the purpose of getting money from the tourists spending the night there, and the "luck" makes that their first customer after a long waiting to be a suicidal one; and since the business wasn't going very well, the decision is to hide the body for the moment to avoid the police investigation and creating a bad image. So, "The Family" ends up passing through a series of grim events starting with this one and continuing with others chained in a way that each new one is as more hilarious as dark it gets. Surprisingly the humor is a good one, sometimes dry, sometimes more "explosive" and in most of the case actually believable despite the lack of probability of the situation. To compare the movie with something I would say that's actually a sort of "Addams family" in a more credible fashion.

The production is pretty old and the budget quite low. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised by some scenes that are a subtle sending to the '90s horrors (like "I Know What you did Last Summer"). The movie is not a very violent one being more focused on the comic side than on horror. And for that it deserves to be appreciated that besides the story and script it has some other strong points ranging from the cast to the soundtrack which is one made from a couple of oldies "synced" a la Tarantino with the action on the screen.

The verdict is a clear recommend to see. Especially if a dose of dark humor helps you from time to time to take easier harsh situations that you would like to forget.

Rating: 4 out of 5