While stranded roadside awaiting a tow truck, a pregnant woman is kidnapped and killed by a deranged serial killer (Min-sik Choi). Her fiancé (Byung-hun Lee) just so happens to be a secret agent, and he sets out to exact revenge. Not content to merely execute his girlfriend’s killer and be done with it, our hero instead allows him to escape, only to find him and punish him again and again. Unfortunately, the crafty killer eludes his grasp, and he sets out to make his tormentor pay by making his family his next victims.
From Jee-woon (The Last Stand) Kim, I Saw the Devil is one of the most brutal, unflinching, harrowing, and disturbing films I have ever seen. That’s not hyperbole. I actually had to stop the movie a couple times because it became so intense and I was so emotionally drained. Maybe 2020 wasn’t the year to check out such a bleak, nihilistic, and depressing flick.
That said, the craftsmanship at work here is astounding. It is a headlong plunge into the darkest recesses of man’s soul, and it never looks back. it would’ve been easy to let something like this lapse into your standard torture porn scenario. However, Kim proves to be a dynamic filmmaker. There is a scene inside a car where the camera pans around the three passengers that is on par with anything the Masters of Horror have concocted.
The performance by Lee is an all-timer too. He is a complete badass during his stalking and torturing scenes. As a fan of his work in the G.I. Joe movies, I expected that. What caught me completely off guard was how great he is during his grieving sequences. His final scene is downright heartbreaking, and in the last few seconds of screen time is some of the best acting I’ve seen in a long time.
In short, I Saw the Devil deserves to be discussed in the same breath as Seven and Silence of the Lambs as one of the all-time greats of serial killer cinema. Be warned however: This movie will chew you up and spit you out.
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