In Korean author/director Park Syeyoung’s debut function 2022, “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra”, mold on an abandoned mattress is born a parasitic creature that partying on the spinal cord of all people it touches. The film entering more unpredictable, strange touching territory than its B-movie-like The prerequisite may initially propose, but the basic log line would not feel in its place among the demonizing government’s propaganda, which returns through Park’s convincing follow -up function, “The fin“Where even the lightest physical contact with a minority group is portrayed as life -threatening. Don’t let some parts of them touch you, otherwise you will be infected. Don’t let them scream because the sound will kill you.
Unlike a mattress monster that actually feeds on humans, the other creatures in Park’s other invisible creature function are recognizably human, even though the wider population is encouraged not to perceive them in that way. Is located in a speculative, post-unification korea, “The fin“Traces the relationship between brainwashed citizens and the subclass they have been trained to hatred – and also to exploit.
As a result of Organic devastationPart of the Korean population – we get little sense of how the rest of the world is doing – has undergone mutations that unite them closer to the legend more. These mutated people, who are known as omegas, have fins and unusual feet, but otherwise look the same as the rest of their countrymen. To pass without any hassle in Korea’s different colonies, Omegas can interrupt parts of their feet or fins, or hide these appendices with prostheses made by the rare “normal” person who is sympathetic for their difficulties. Every omega that is discovered within a colonis boundaries is arrested to be expelled beyond the wall, or ends in sight in cases where a trigger-happy government worker believes that their life is threatened by an omega simply shouting.
The non-mutated population is fed with the proposal that Omega’s screams are deadly outside water, that their fins are full of toxins, and that when they die they release radiation. The accuracy for everything that remains quite ambiguous about Park’s film, but faith drives the structure of society. However, in the case of East Colony 114, some omegas have been allowed to live around the beaches and cliffs just outside the large wall, as long as they act as the labor force to clean the contaminated seas.
In the colony, pure water is an expensive item. Citizens are encouraged to reduce the bath for the best. Among the dirty population, nostalgia for the sea and fishing becomes something that energetic entrepreneurs can use. The film’s opening story is based on memories from water and adds the exhibition about dystopia with a personal touch. “They said the sea used to be blue,” says a young woman’s voice. “They said many died. My first memory is of a blood red sky. Black raindrops fell on my lips. Release. Release. They tasted bitter, and I was sick all night. Father spent the night also by coughing. And then disappeared father.”
Accompanying these words is a mounting of photographs of people who stand with fishing features of different sizes, with all human faces curious blurred out. Eventually we come to a photo that disturbs that formula: one where most faces remain blurred, with the exception of a little girl. When this last photo in mounting begins to dissolve from vision, a close -up of a young adult woman’s face is gradually in the middle of the frame. This will prove to be the adult version of both the narrator and the little girl who stands out in the photograph. Her name is Mia (Yeji Yeon, “Pachinko”), she will be sought by both a named Omega (Goh-Woo), infiltrate East Colony 114 with an assignment to find her and deliver a cut off fine and Sujin (Pureum Kim), a beginner recruits in the task both of which check up to omega gathers over all the time.
Through Sujin, Park examines the way of thinking for someone who follows orders but begins to doubt the state’s ideology and the subsequent infectiousness of fear that has infected so many in such unpleasant ways – a view that will prove too time in a large number of countries where the film can be released. Sujin’s sick mother barely speaks, but when she does, it is mainly to spit venom with just the mention of omegas, which indicates that they would all be killed. Meanwhile, Mia represents the internal conflicts in the assimilated “others.” She passes by keeping parts of her identity secret, buys in at least parts of propaganda aimed at the minority group she is secretly from and is openly hostile when she comes face to face with someone from the group that reaches her.
The patient in his stimulation, “The Fine” is a captivating mood rather than a dystopian story based on constant clashes, although the threat of violence always trouble. As in “The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra”, Park, which once again acts as its own cinematic, gets a lot of mileage from a strange type of intimacy achieved through characters that are unconsciously observed at a distance, whether through some open doors or high from above. The broader aesthetic favors hazy saturation, the colors of the city streets and the outer wilderness-each dead zones in their own way-that is reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic touch stone as Constantin Lopushans’s “Visitors to a museum” and in other places, Guy Maddin and Evan Johnsons recently cooperate as “The Forbalor.
As an independent production, “fine” is largely effective in its expressionist solutions to budget restrictions, with a pleasant tactility for the practical effects on the display. That said, there is a questionable shortcut that leaves an acidic taste in the mouth: Early in the film, we are shown a government prayer video about the large wall and the uniform Korea. It is a propaganda ad in an explicitly dystopian story, so it is obviously meant to make you feel uncomfortable, but there is something a bit of the pictures and movement in these short clips; An unpleasant quality that is inherent in bad simulacra of real art direction.
Then we reach one of the longest clips in propaganda video and the depressing explanation becomes obvious. A shot of back on several yellow jackets looking at a distant statue lasts only a few seconds, but within that time many of the still -image figures warked the warpform. Some “people” blur together, while others see the lower halves on their legs suddenly differ from the rest of the body. If you have been unlucky enough to have working eyes in recent years, you will recognize this as unequivocally an example of generative AI being used instead of pushing real images. With all respect for the press to make an unconventional sci-fi movie on a narrow budget, with ecologically destructive technology for a story of ecological devastation, where clean water is an increasingly rare resource, adds an unintentionally bleak layer of irony to the story.
Rating: B-
“The Fine” premiered at 2025 Locarno Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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