Tweet
Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: July 12th, 2018.
Director: Huh Jung
Cast: Park Hyeok-kwon, Yum Jung-ah, Heo Jin
Year: 2017
Purchase From Amazon
The Mimic - Movie Review:
Based on a Korean myth known as 'The Tiger Of Mt. Jang,' The Mimic, directed in 2017 by Huh Jung, opens with an unsettling scene where a man places a victim inside a cave and starts bricking it up ensuring that there will be no escape. This man, and a woman who accompanies him, then hear whoever it is that they've bricked up inside the cave call out. It's a great way to setup the movie, instantly grabbing out attention and making us want to know more about what's happening.
From there, we meet Hee-yeon (Yum Jung-ah), a woman who hasn't been able to really get over the disappearance of her son some time ago. Complicating matters more is the presence of her mother, Soon-ja (Heo Jin), who appears to be suffering from dementia of maybe Alzheimer's Disease. Soon after we meet Hee-yeon and her amiable husband Min-ho (Park Hyuk-Kwon, they decide to take Soon-ja and move back to the old family home near Mt. Jang with their young daughter, Jun-hee (Jang Liu), in tow.
On their way, they come across a young girl (Shin Rin-ah), seemingly both mute and terribly lost and all by herself. Quite understandably, Hee-yeon wants to help the girl and so the family takes her in and notice that it appears she's been abused. Though at first the girl doesn't speak at all, before too long she starts mimicking the familiar voice of their missing son, which ties into the legend of the mountain and the demon that lives there, able to imitate human voices to trick people into making what would otherwise be foolish decisions.
From that tense opening, The Mimic slows down to a crawl for the next forty-minutes or so, only to them ramp things back up considerably for its final third act. This makes the movie a bit of a slog to get through at times, though ultimately the pay off is decent enough that fans of slow burn supernatural spook shows should find enough to appreciate in the picture to warrant a viewing. Production values are solid - there are some really effective camera angles used here to accentuate some of the film's scarier moments - and the score works nicely too. In fact, the sound design is a big part of what makes this movie appealing when the plot is actually moving forward. There's a lot of surround activity, some subtle and some not so subtle, that helps immensely in building atmosphere when it's time for the spooky shenanigans to being. The cast all turn in decent performances, Yun Jung-ah in particular is very good here. It's just that the pacing isn't all that.
The Mimic - Blu-ray Review:
The Mimic looks great on a 25GB Blu-ray disc in this AVC encoded 1.85.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer from Well Go USA. Depth is impressive here as is the color reproduction. There are no problems with compression artifacts and detail is generally strong throughout. Some minor banding is noticeable here and there but it's not ever to the point where it becomes distracting. Skin tones look lifelike, black levels are strong and there are no noticeable problems with compression artifacts. Texture is great. All in all, the movie looks very good in high definition on this release.
The primary audio option on this disc is a Korean language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, though an optional Korean Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is also included on the disc. Subtitles are provided in English only. Getting back to that Korean language lossless track, it sounds really good. The film makes great use of the surround channels, so expect a good amount of sound effects to zip past you in addition to some great directionality in terms of how the score is used throughout the film. Dialogue stays clean and clear, the subtitles are easy to read and free of any typographical errors, and the levels are properly balanced throughout. All in all, this is a very lively and active mix and a very enjoyable one at that.
Well Go USA includes two featurettes on the disc, the first is entitled Director's Commentary (though it's not a commentary track) and it runs two-minutes, allowing Huh Jung to offer up some quick insight into the picture and its sound design. The second featurette is a three-minute piece called The Actors and it includes input from the key cast members who speak quite briefly about their work on the picture.
Aside from that, we get a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Well Go USA properties, menus and chapter selection.
The Mimic - Final Word:
The Mimic has some genuinely spooky moments and some great imagery but it also suffers from some pacing problems that dampen the impact of the otherwise effective sense of horror and dread that the picture conjures up. Well Go USA's Blu-ray is light on extras but looks and sounds great. Not a bad way to kill ninety-minutes, just not a modern masterpiece.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
