Revelations

Story: The priest Seong Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) runs a small church in the neighborhood. He tries to win over a new churchgoer, but Kwon Yang-rae (Shin Min-jae) only came to mass because he followed a little girl. Min-chan is not aware of this, but he notices by chance that the man is wearing an ankle monitor. Policewoman Lee Yeon-hee (Shin Hyun-been) follows the sex offender whenever she can as he once kidnapped her sister. Some time later, Min-chan gets a call from his wife that their daughter has disappeared. Actually, the priest was supposed to pick her up from kindergarten, but he forgot, and apparently another man took her. Min-chan immediately suspects Yang-rae and visits him at his address. There he sees him loading some tools into his car. The priest calls the police, but it is hard for him to explain the exact circumstances and the context, and suddenly his cell phone battery dies. He therefore decides to follow the offender, and then there is a fight in which Yang-rae is killed. The priest is about to call the police, but he gets a sign from God and decides to throw the body down a slope instead. Later, it turns out that his daughter was not actually kidnapped, she went to the neighbor's house. However, a little girl from the church is missing, so the police are looking for her as well as Yang-rae under high pressure, because they were notified that he took off his ankle monitor. It doesn't take long for Detective Lee to question the priest too.

Review: "Revelations" is the kind of thriller in which one catastrophe follows the next and illogical decisions are supposed to increase the suspense. At least that was my first impression after the priest tries to hide his murder. But then the story turns out to be far more complex. The two protagonists get so much backstory and so many side stories that paint us an accurate picture of their psyche and the changes they are going through that it almost feels too much. In addition, it turns out to be a bit problematic that we initially have the priest as our anchor, because then the movie's perspective suddenly shifts, turning more and more to the policewoman. At the beginning you can still root for the pastor, but it becomes increasingly difficult as he sees the signs of God in everything and seems to go insane by the minute. The policewoman, on the other hand, struggles with the trauma of losing her sister. In addition, there are some twists and a few surprises that make the story seem a bit overloaded in the end too. It's also not clear exactly in which direction the director wants to go. Because as far as themes go, the dangers of fanatical faith, or reparation and redemption run parallel to one other.

At the beginning, there are countless developments. The pastor's wife is cheating, he will probably be passed over for a promotion, and he tries to lead a lost soul, the offender, back to the right path until he suspects him of kidnapping his daughter. At the same time, we have the female detective who sees her dead sister as a ghost - an embodiment of her guilty conscience. Those scenes could almost come right out of a horror movie, as we only get to see the sister as a blurred silhouette. However, that's as far as it goes, which may not have been such a bad idea after all. If "Revelations" had also mixed genres, the whole thing would have become an even more incoherent work. Because, unfortunately, after what you've read so far, the various developments have only just begun, and even though that might be quite exciting, you can't really say that everything fits together nicely. Especially the change of perspective, which doesn't happen too sudden, though, creates a distance to the two protagonists or at least to the priest.

With Ryu Jun-yeol ("Alienoid") and Shin Hyun-been ("The Closet") there are undoubtedly talented actors in front of the camera as they manage to bring the various facets of their characters into action. Nevertheless, especially when it comes to Ryu Jun-yeol, it has to be said that he slowly loses the viewer's sympathy. Nonetheless, it is very likely that another actor would not have been able to change anything about that either. It is a problem caused by the script, even though it at first seems like it could be a tiny stroke of genius. Maybe we are actually watching every step of someone who becomes the real villain over time? This question clearly creates suspense, but it also builds up an emotional wall. With the detective, however, you get the feeling that we are introduced to her motives and are allowed to look into the abysses of her soul far too late. Other characters also drift further and further into insignificance. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to the pastor's wife, whose side story about her adultery is only briefly dealt with, and we hardly learn anything at all about the detective's father and the colleagues in the investigation either.

Min-chan is a deeply religious person, and it is fascinating to see how he covers up the murder and justifies his actions by telling himself that this is God's plan as he doesn't want to jeopardize his chances of getting the pastorate at a big church. He sees signs everywhere - Jesus' face in a rock formation, or an angel in the shape of clouds - which show him that he is doing God's work. In doing so, he is sucked into a vortex in which he can justify every action, no matter how bad it may be, by seeing God's will in everything. Visually, God's revelations are implemented beautifully. You immediately recognize what they are supposed to be, but you also realize that they are only coincidences and that Min-chan reads into them whatever works for him. Even when everything starts to fall apart, it only moves Min-chan further and further onto the path of being "God's warrior". The alternative would be to admit your own mistakes and possibly perish because of them. When it comes to its subject matter, "Revelations" therefore goes deeper than you would expect from a fast-paced thriller. The only problem is that this is sometimes pushed a little too far. Some coincidences are so strange that you have to ask yourself whether there might not be a higher power at play after all. It would have been nice if the movie had played a little more with this aspect of uncertainty.

The real finale takes place when there is actually still half an hour left. This in turn leads to the last scenes of the movie maybe still being captured in a captivating manner, but they don't feel like an actual showdown: which is a bit anticlimactic. In addition, the theme of reparation and the drama that comes with it seems too forced. Here it becomes clear again that the director simply wanted too much. Only later did I find out that the director is no other than Yeon Sang-ho. Although he already put together a movie that didn't quite convince me with "Psychokinesis", it's "Train to Busan" that actually made him become part of the big league. If you then take into account that Alfonso Cuarón, the director of "Gravity", co-produced the movie, the countless shortcomings are even more significant. With this movie Yeon adapted his comic, which he wrote together with Choi Gyu-seok, and simply went into every direction. Maybe his success has gone to his head these days. Still, the good pacing and a fascinating story, in which good and evil cannot be clearly defined, still make me look favorably at this mystery thriller. Because at least it tried to do something different.

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