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James Marsh

2/5 stars
Since transitioning from animation to live action, Korean writer-director Yeon Sang-ho has struggled to recapture the success of his barnstorming breakout hit, the action-packed zombie thriller Train to Busan.
He has worked predominantly with Netflix in the years since, on a string of horror-infused series (Hellbound, Parasyte: The Grey) and science fiction films (Psychokinesis, Jung_E), yet nothing has succeeded in recapturing the earlier film’s assured balance of social commentary and visceral thrills.
Yeon’s latest offering, Revelations, is adapted from a 2022 comic book he penned with Choi Gyu-seok.


It focuses on an ambitious pastor, Sung (played by Ryu Jun-yeol), who takes justice into his own hands when he encounters a recently released sex offender, Kwon (Shin Min-jae), shortly before his own daughter goes missing.
Emboldened by what he believes to be divine intervention, Sung goes after Kwon with predictably disastrous results.
Also eyeballing the former criminal is traumatised police detective Lee (Shin Hyun-been), whose sister was kidnapped and tortured by Kwon, causing her to later commit suicide.
Perpetually tormented by her sister’s ghost, who urges Lee to avenge her death, the recently reinstated Lee is horrified to see Kwon back on the streets.

While Yeon strives for a more grounded and realistic tone than in his previous genre efforts, Revelations nevertheless falls victim to the same sketchy logic and flimsy plotting that has plagued many of his recent endeavours.
On the plus side, Yeon gleefully attacks the corporatisation of religion in Korea, where Christian megachurches have sprung up across the country and wield incredible power without sufficient legal oversight.
Sung genuinely believes that he is empowered by the will of God, and this makes for an intriguing contrast with Lee, who wields legitimate authority while being spurred on by horrifying delusions from beyond the grave.
Sung’s increasingly misguided antics recall the events of Kim Seong-hun’s 2014 film A Hard Day, but lack the darkly comic undertone that permitted audiences to laugh along with Lee Sun-kyun’s absurd antics.

What begins as biased and misguided here spirals into pathological behaviour, while Lee’s approach is only marginally better.
Both characters operate on the notions that Kwon is guilty purely by association and that the very idea he may have been rehabilitated is preposterous. That their baseless assumptions soon prove to be true is a troubling affirmation of these prejudices, which crop up in Korean cinema all too frequently.
Bad people are just bad people, never capable of change; for them, concrete evidence and due process is as unnecessary as it is inconvenient. Sometimes, it seems, a shifty appearance is evidence enough.
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Ryu Jun-yeol as Sung Min-chan in a still from Revelations. Photo: Cho Wonjin/Netflix

Ryu Jun-yeol as pastor Sung Min-chan in a still from Netflix K-drama Revelations. Photo: Cho Wonjin/Netflix

Shin Hyun-been as Detective Lee in a still from Revelations. Photo: Netflix

Ryu Jun-yeol as Sung the pastor (left) and Shin Min-jae as Kwon, a sex offender, in a still from Revelations. Photo: Cho Wonjin/Netflix

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A flimsy plot and sketchy logic spoil this story of a pastor and a detective who go after a recently released sex offender


A flimsy plot and sketchy logic spoil this story of a pastor and a detective who go after a recently released sex offender.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

Review | Netflix movie review: Revelations – Ryu Jun-yeol in Yeon Sang-ho’s disappointing thriller

A flimsy plot and sketchy logic spoil this story of a pastor and a detective who go after a recently released sex offender