End of Animal (2010) is the first film of this year’s Festival that I’ve truly detested. As a devoted fan of Korean cinema, it pains me to admit this. But this incomprehensible mess, written and directed by Sung-Hee Jo, is guilty of a crime far worse than sporting a senseless narrative. Beyond the intrigue created by the opening five minutes, it’s dead boring; so utterly static and pointless, in fact, than I was on the verge of tears a couple of times, begging for something interesting to happen and justify its existence.
A taxi is driving through a wasteland with a pregnant female passenger (Lee Min-ji) in the back. It stops to pick up a second, a young man in a baseball cap, always partially obscured, who seems to possess the power to know what the other two are thinking as well as intimate details about their lives. He makes random, cryptic utterances about time counting down to something. Then something happens, an “event” that may or may not be supernatural in nature.
A flash of light blinds us the world emerges again. The taxi driver and second passenger have vanished. Are we in a post-apocalyptic, alternate version of the world? The woman stumbles out, ignores a note from the driver to wait for his return and goes exploring. It’s a snail’s pace from here as this sadistic director prods his protagonist through the bland, colourless remnants of this place. The woman encounters a young boy, a dog, another couple, unseen beasts growl in the distance, presumably hungry for a good fleshy feed. A stultifying boredom sets in and dialogue adds little illumination as characters backtrack and disappear.
The mysterious taxi passenger’s voice intrudes like that an omniscient deity on a walkie talkie. Is he the orchestrator of the “event” and all that follows? Have we been submerged into somebody’s dream? More acts of violence follow as we’re treated to evidence supporting that overwrought cinematic conception of humans devolving into savagery in a world of apocalyptic design. I’d lost interest long before the torturous final encounter arrived.
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