A Major Disappointment

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I was so disappointed by this film. It is rarely that films get on my nerves but this one did just that.I will not comment on the background music or the cinematography because my opinion does not matter since I am not an expert.It started off good with promising scenario. I did not know if the story-line would center around the girl's relationship with the teacher and his inability to tell his wife the truth or if the girl was going to end up being a psychopath. After a while, we see that the girl is totally crazy, trying to be as close to him as possible, hinting to his wife that her husband is sleeping around with her, giving those wild looks with her freaky big eyes and so on. If the film ended up being like Fatal Attraction, I would probably rate it way higher than I did. What really disturbed me is that the director and writer did not know which way they wanted the film to go. At one scene, the girl is portrayed as infatuated with the teacher, acting crazy and crossing the line and the next one, she suddenly has feelings and feels like the victim who was betrayed by the one she loved. You cannot have both, dear writer. She is either a psychopath (who has no feelings, feels no remorse or strong connection such as love to other humans)or she is indeed a nice, sweet girl who loves her teacher. If you have studied psychology, you understand what I mean.Also, the final scenes were a bit off. He does not want his wife to be hurt and he chooses her when the girl gives him an ultimatum yet he is scared when she is close to falling off the building and holds onto her hand for dear life until he can't anymore..Then in the final scene, we see him crying his eyes out, mostly because the girl died but also because he obviously isn't enjoying his life back home. So what did he actually want? A crazy girl bossing him around, seducing him, even raping him (at some point), threatening him when she can't have her own way?All in all, I could not understand what the point of the film was. I suppose it wanted us to think it was well-thought and had some plot twists, but it ended up causing a huge mess, which, unfortunately, was not beautiful.Rating 2/10

The cast in "Innocent Thing" was quite good. I wasn't familiar with the people they had cast for the movie, but the cast was quite good, and they did great jobs with their given roles and characters. Especially the two leads, Hyuk Jang and Bo-ah Jo. They had a great on-screen chemistry, and they really performed quite well and convincingly.As for the characters, then writer Tae-gyun Kim had definitely managed to put together a very interesting and colorful character gallery to help bring the story to life. And it works nicely, because the characters are characters that you can easily relate to and sympathize with."Innocent Thing" is driven by a solid story and well-fleshed out characters. And it was really working out so well and it made the movie all the more enjoyable.Story-wise, then "Innocent Thing" then I found the story that writer Sung-min Lee had concocted to be rather entertaining and well-thought through. And director Tae-gyun Kim did a great job in translating it from script and paper to visual presentation on the screen. The story does deal with a taboo topic, one that surfaces in society every now and then in the news. Which, just makes the entire story all the more convincing and believable.Some things in the movie didn't make all that much sense. For example, why would the student have her teachers private phone number. And some of the behavior expressed by some of the characters just didn't always make the most of sense. But hey, people act differently of course, so that would be justified.The pacing of the movie was quite good, and they had opted for some very interesting choice of music to accompany the movie. Now, I am not saying that the music was bad, far from it. It was actually quite becoming and fitting for the mood and atmosphere of the movie."Innocent Thing" is listed as a drama and thriller, don't put too much hope and expectations into the thriller aspect, because it wasn't there in an abundance. The attempts of introducing thrills to the story were a bit forced and generic, and very much like something done in previous movies such as "Fatal Attraction" for example. That being said, don't get me wrong here, because "Innocent Thing" is a rather enjoyable movie given its storyline, great acting, good character gallery and its editing and cinematography.

Young-eun develops a crush on her high school physical ed teacher, Jun-ki. Jun-ki initially finds her attractive, but then tries to break off the developing relationship after scandalous rumors threaten his career. This is easier said than done, since Young-eun becomes obsessed and refuses to let him go.This certainly isn't the first movie with a similar theme, but there's a lot to like about Innocent Thing, foremost among them being an outstanding performance by Jo Bo-ah as Young-eun. She seemingly without effort displays a wide range of emotions, from cute and flirty to dark and menacing. The movie could not succeed without a strong performance from her, and Jo Bo-ah delivers splendidly.I normally would not like the disjointed editing that frequently makes it impossible to tell whether a scene is really happening, or is simply a hallucination in Young-eun's psychotic mind. But in this movie I thought it was a great way to allow the viewer to experience Young-eun's descent into madness. We think that she is a cold-blooded murderer who will let nothing come between her and her obsession, but then discover that at least one of the murders never happened at all. How about the other one? I'm not sure, and I doubt that Young-eun knows either. It could be murder, it could be an insane revenge fantasy that never happened.There is a lot of moral ambiguity in the movie. Jun-ki starts out with an indefensible attraction to a high school girl, but at least never lets it develop into a real affair. The pregnant wife starts out as an innocent victim of her husband's unfaithfulness and Young- eun's jealousy, but then commits what would be a serious offense while trying to hush things up. Depending on your point of view, Young-eun is either a menacing psycho or the victim of Jun-ki's lust and the wife's attempted cover-up.I suggest you see Innocent Thing with friends. It's entertaining enough to keep you all on the edge of your seats, and there will certainly be a lot to talk about afterward.

There really isn't anything that really stands out about this movie. Besides the fact that it takes place in Korea and revolves around Korean customs. The plot about a psychotic girl having a crush on a guy has been done quite a lot in western movies. So this really didn't seem to bring about anything all that new. I liked the message in the end about how guys should not take advantage of girl's emotions though. And there was one part that really crosses the line and brings about the human nature of things. But I have seen it happen in other movies before. The cinematography is also pretty good and that includes the acting as well. Overall this is another movie about a psychotic crush that leads to psychotic actions, except this time it takes place in Korea. 3.5/10