2013｜125 MIN｜Action, Thriller

DIRECTOR JANG Joon-hwan

CAST KIM Yun-seok, YEO Jin-gu, CHO Jin-woong, JANG Hyun-sung, KIM Sung-kyun

RELEASE DATE October 9, 2013

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The burden of expectation can weigh heavily on filmmakers after a well-received debut, especially if a lot of time passes before a sophomore outing. Such was the case with director JANG Joon-hwan, whose wildly eccentric debut Save the Green Planet (2003) performed poorly upon its release but quickly developed a legion of fans, both at home and especially abroad. Following several unreleased projects, it would ultimately take a full decade for him to complete his return to the director’s chair. The result was the dusty and bloody coming-of-age revenge drama Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013).

Hwayi, who takes his name from a tree from Jeju Island, is a teenager who has been raised by the five infamous criminals who kidnapped him as a child. He lives with them in the countryside, where they pose as horticulturists in Paju, but actually plot violent crimes that have them commuting in and out of Seoul. Suk-tae, the grizzled leader of the gang, takes on a job that involves killing an old man and his wife. He wants to bring along Hwayi, whom the fathers have been training for years, to induct him into the trade, but things don’t go as planned and buried memories begin to come to the surface.

Just like Save the Green Planet, Hwayi: A Monster Boy focuses on a childhood trauma that wreaks havoc in the present, but beyond that and an affinity for extreme genre tropes, these are extremely different films. JANG’s sophomore work is a far more polished affair, which benefits from the cinematography of KIM Jee-yong, who recently earned the coveted Golden Frog for The Fortress (2017) from the Camerimage event in Poland, and a score by Mowg, who wrote the music for LEE Chang-dong’s BURNING this year. Perhaps as a reaction to the commercial disappointment of his first film, JANG’s second film works from a script that features a more balanced blend of melodrama and strong genre tropes. 

The final piece of the package is the hugely talented cast that he has assembled, which ranges from industry veterans such as KIM Yun-seok (The Chaser, 2008), JANG Hyun-sung (Spider Forest, 2004) and LEE Gyoung-young (Inside Men, 2015), to new faces such as YEO Jin-gu, a celebrity plucked from TV, a pre-celebrity YOO Yeon-seok (The Beauty Inside, 2015) and PARK Hae-joon (Believer), who is now on the cusp of stardom. MOON Sung-keun (Haemoo, 2014), CHO Jin-woong (The Spy Gone North), KIM Sung-kyun (The Sheriff In Town, 2017), PARK Yong-woo (Late Spring, 2014) and SEO Young-hwa (On the Beach at Night Alone, 2017) round out the main cast, which also has room for a range of smaller parts for actors who now rank among the industry’s top supporting players, such as KIM So-jin (The King, 2017) and KIM Hong-pa (REAL, 2017). 

Hwayi: A Monster Boy turned out to be a solid performer, particularly for a film with a restricted rating. However, its 2.39 million admissions haul would pale in comparison with JANG’s much deserved true commercial breakout, last year’s critically acclaimed political drama 1987: When the Day Comes, which also starred KIM Yun-seok (and YEO Jin-gu in a cameo) and sailed past the seven million viewer mark before earning several major accolades from Korea’s top industry awards.