Midnight (Korean movie)

                      Midnight      미드나이트

Midnight is a 2021 South Korean psychological thriller film, written and directed by Kwon Oh seung. The film starring Jin ki woo, Wi ha joon and kim Hye-yoon, depicts a life-threatening hide-and-seek scenario between a psychopathic killer and a deaf woman.

This twisty turny thriller from South Korea is an impressive, auspicious debut for writer-director Kwon Oh Seung taut as a piano-wire garotte, it’s compelling as a genre exercise. But it also offers a (possibly accidental) critique of a culture that often treats women and disabled people as inferior to able-bodied men. That latter point is extremely well illustrated late in Midnight when heroine Kyung Mi (Jin Ki-joo), a young deaf woman, keeps trying to get help from the cops or onlookers in a crowded street only to find people usually inclined to believe her pursuer, serial killer Do Shik (Wi Ha-Joon, best known as the handsome cop from Squid Game, magnificent here as a baddie) because he’s such a good actor, skilled at implying she’s “hysterical” or “damaged”.

At least it’s the women who show mettle, resourcefulness and compassion, and that also goes for Kyung Mi’s deaf mother ( kil Hae-yeon) the men are largely thugs, dopes or in Do Shik’s case, straight up killers. While Kyung Mi and her mum’s deafness and skill with sign language puts a spin on things, the script doesn’t patronise them by making them more noble or more vulnerable, nor does deafness define their characters.

 Unsurprisingly, the film uses sound and silence inventively – both to simulate how the world sounds to its deaf characters but also to crank up the tension. That said, Kwon can’t resist over-egging the pudding in the final act with a protracted, borderline-silly finale; but even that excess makes it interesting.