2012|115 MIN | Thriller
DIRECTOR KIM Hwi
CAST KIM Yun-jin, Don LEE, CHUN Ho-jin, KIM Sung-kyun, KIM Sae-ron, JANG Young-nam,
RELEASE DATE August 22, 2012
CONTACT Lotte Entertainment
Tel : +82 2 3470 3523
Fax : +82 2 3470 3549
Based on a webtoon by popular author KANG Full,
The Neighbors (2012) was the debut feature of filmmaker
KIM Hwi, movie that met with steady success towards the end of the summer season in 2012. It accrued 2.43 million spectators even after films such as
The Thieves (2012),
The Grand Heist (2012) and
Deranged (2012) had already swept up most of the season’s crowds.
A middle-school student fails to return home from school one day and 10 days later her body is found, unceremoniously stuffed in a suitcase by her killer. Her death causes enormous grief to her stepmother who bears an unspeakable amount of guilt after she failed to show up at school to pick her up that day. The stepmother is now haunted as each day the spirit of the girl returns home as if nothing happened. Further startling the woman is another teenager living in the apartment complex who looks exactly like the dead girl.
Other residents in the residence are having their own problems as mysteries begin to pop up around them. Soon, the security guards, a local pizza delivery boy, a suitcase merchant, a thug and a busybody housewife all begin to suspect that the killer, who has already struck several times, may, in fact, be the anti-social man living in one of the basement apartments, who orders pizza and buys a new suitcase every ten days, the same interval as the local slayings.
All the characters live in an old set of apartment towers that lacks the security features of modern complexes and attract an unseemly set of residents due to their lower prices. Despite their proximity to each other, these neighbors know little about one another and the film shows in detail the personal baggage each of them deals with but is unable to share with the people around them.
KANG has penned several webtoons that have been adapted to the big screen, including the revenge drama
26 Years (2012) and melodrama
Ba:Bo (2008). He is also responsible for an earlier work that already examined the relationships in an apartment complex, with dark turns and secrets, in
A.P.T, which was also adapted as a film when
AN Byung-ki turned it into a horror film of the same name in 2006.