Fridae

It starts with the origins of our supervillain, known only as Cho-In (Korean for ‘Ubermensch’) (Kang Dong Won). He is raised by a pitiful but overbearing mother and a cruel father, and having lost one leg for some unknown reason and needing a prosthetic limb. He is also gifted with a formidable superpower: the ability to control others physically, maybe tens or even hundreds at a time, with the power of his gaze, that has made him a pariah since birth. After he kills his abusive father and escapes from his mother who is tries to strangle him in a murder-suicide attempt, he embarks on a life of crime, leaving trails of bodies in his wake, drunk on his own power.

In the present day, Gyu-Nam (Ko Soo) is a simpleminded worker at a junkyard who hangs with his best foreign labourer buddies, the Turk Ali (Enes Kaya) and the Ghanaian Baba (Abu Dodd). Yes, those are actually their names. When Gyu-Nam is fired from his job after a deadly accident that fails to kill him and becomes a ‘manager’ at a shady pawnshop, his paths cross with Cho-In, for Gyu-Nam, blessed with superior strength, speed and self-healing ability on par with Marvel’s Wolverine, is immune to Cho-In’s deadly power.

Haunters marks the latest in a series of “mundane superhero” films and TV shows, which basically attempt to deglamorise the entire superhero genre to show superheroes living in a world that more or less resembles our own, with the result either playing it for laughs or to deconstruct the superhero mentality, or both. Examples of such Heroes on TV, and in film, there’s been Unbreakable, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Hancock and Push. And even to a certain extent, Kick-Ass.

Haunters succeeds at this in going further than most, it seems, in the lack of self-consciousness on the parts of both Gyu Nam and Cho-In that they are superheroes or supervillains. Both men have little time for the whole business of costumes, secret identities, secret lairs and grandiose plans to take over the world or save it from disaster. Why does Cho-In need any of that when he can commit crimes and get away with multiple murders on the basis of his complete anonymity, and Gyu Nam is too busy trying to save lives just because he can? There is also a scene parodying the usual gadget scenes from James Bond films that is a hoot, with a brilliant payoff that is one of the film’s high points.

This irreverence for superhero conventions however is accompanied by thoughtful storytelling and believable characters that keep one’s emotions firmly invested in the characters and their fates. Especially memorable are Ali and Baba, whose bonding scenes with Gyu-Nam have the naturalistic, spontaneous feel reminiscent of Italian neo-realist films. That they’re played by foreign actors who aren’t bad (a rarity in East Asian cinema when it’s not hiring from Hollywood or elsewhere) is to its credit. Veteran character actor Byeong Hee-Byun, best known for his appearances in Bong Jun-Ho films, is also hilarious in an extended cameo as a pawnshop owner. Director Kim Min-Suk supplies the fair share of well-shot action sequences, including a car chase scene that seems to be a riff on Inception.

The resulting film feels less like the expectation of a “superhero film”, than a character-driven drama with superhero elements. But make no mistake, Haunters is a lot of fun, a non-comic book superhero film that nevertheless fulfills every reason why we go to superhero films.