Blind (Kor – 블라인드) is a Korean thriller themed film which touches on disability and necrophilia.
A young police officer in training (Min Soo Ah played by Ha Neul Kim) has suffered an accident which has left her visually impaired, and her brother dead. As she tries to regain her self confidence and learn how to live without the ability to see, she somehow stumbles onto a hit and run incident and turns into an important witness. Through the start she is faced with the problem of convincing people that she can be reliable despite her loss of eyesight, but her problems soon become more life threatening.
In trying to identify the killer, Soo Ah is faced with all sorts of twists and turns, including the arrogant Kwon Ki-Sub (Yoo Seung Ho) who contradicts her testimony.
When we first meet him, this young rebel sends them back to square one when they thought they were getting somewhere with the case. The audience are then led to believe (along with the main characters) that he was lying about his eye witness testimony. Already we have a good reason to dislike him.
As the story progresses, we see a more ‘human’ side to him, and he becomes more likeable which is quite nice.
I also noticed that the characters didn’t have much of a chance to develop, and because of this I wasn’t so much attached to them. However I did find myself rooting for Soo Ah’s guide dog Seul Ki (Dolly). I really liked the connection between the two, and it came across really well.
Some of the way this was filmed I found was interesting. As she is blind the director was limited as he couldn’t do any point of view shots. So instead of this, effects were used to allow the audience to get an idea of how she’s seeing the world in her minds eye. In one particular fight scene, everything completely blacked out so we can’t see anything and we would only hear the sound effects. In another scene we can only see small parts in the frame and the rest would be blacked out. Again, this isn’t something I haven’t seen often in films, and although it confused me a lot at the start it actually works well once you understand it.
So overall, I personally liked this film quite a lot. The story is unique and the characters are well played. I haven’t seen many with a story line similar to this, so it’s a nice change. Normally I try to stay clear of Korean movies, because no matter what the story line is I always end up crying.. Sadly, this is not an exception. If you like drama, thriller with a bit of mystery I definitely recommend this movie! Watch the trailer here!
