Wall to Wall

aka 84m²

Story: Real estate prices in Korea seem to know only one direction: up. Therefore, No Woo-seong (Kang Ha-neul) finally wants to fulfill his dream and buy his own apartment. He works as a normal employee at a company, but he manages to take out a huge loan in order to finally call an apartment his own. Three years later, the market value of his apartment has fallen. He has difficulties paying the monthly installments and interest, so he even has to take on an additional part-time job. Unfortunately, his living situation is not exactly nice either. Almost every hour, he hears extremely loud noises coming from his neighbor’s. To make matters worse, his downstairs neighbor is constantly sticking notes on his door asking him to stop the noise. When she finally rings on his doorbell, he explains that the noise is coming from above him. So, he goes up one floor, where his neighbor Yang Jin-ho (Seo Hyun-woo) explains that the noise is coming from the apartment above him. So, he goes up one floor, where he is sent further up again. When Woo-seong is about to give up, the penthouse owner (Yeom Hye-ran) asks him to have a chat with him. She wants him to have a little more patience, because she owns the neighbor's apartment below him and in two months she will not renew her contract. Regarding the noise, she gives him an envelope with money and so Woo-seong is happy for the time being. When he then also gets a tip that a certain cryptocurrency will soon go through the roof, he even sells his apartment to quickly get some cash, planning to cancel the contract in a few days again and pay the penalty charge with the money he will have made by then. However, things do not entirely go as planned and he receives more and more complaints about the noise, although he himself almost goes crazy because of it ...

Review: Korea has a special love for real estate as an investment. Considering the fact that big cities are continuously expanding and a well-located apartment is worth its weight in gold, this should not come as a surprise. But what if the dream of owning a home or making big money turns into a nightmare? "Wall to Wall" (aka "84m²") takes this premise and turns things up to eleven. Which might also be one of the few points of criticism. There is an enormous number of coincidences and even after everything gets cleared up, the story still seems a bit too complicated. But that doesn't change the fact that we are dealing with a well-produced and, above all, extremely gripping thriller. At the beginning the movie's special appeal lies within the mystery of the noise’s origin. After all, we are still completely in the dark as to whether it is a neighbor who might be after our hero, or if it could even be of supernatural origin. Last but not least, there are also enough clues to consider the possibility of Woo-seong simply losing his mind.

Our protagonist staked everything on one card with his apartment and is left with egg on his face after the real estate prices have fallen. In addition, the interest rates on his loans continue to rise. The little free time he spends at home when he does not work, he sleeps - and then he is not even allowed to do that as the relentless noise continuously wakes him up. First, it is quite fun to watch him going from one floor to the next (it feels a bit like being sent from one case officer to another at city hall). Then he is hushed with a little money for the time being and does not care about the noise anymore. But the creepy downstairs neighbors do not leave him any peace and are absolutely convinced that he is causing the noise. When he asks someone into his apartment to prove that he has to endure the same thing, the noise suddenly stops. From this point on, and because of an increasing number of other coincidences, you slowly become sure that something is wrong. In the meantime, however, Woo-seong is busy turning his situation into something even more dramatic, as he is now also investing in cryptocurrency. As a viewer, you know, of course, in which direction all this will go, but how we get there is actually implemented in a gripping way.

At some point, the noise gets so nerve-wracking that Woo-seong starts hallucinating and pretty much finds himself in a fever dream. All this reaches its climax within the first half of the movie, and you are so emotionally affected by it that you are grateful for a short break at that point. After the first half of the flick, it is important to get to the bottom of the noise’s origins again. Here, the thriller actually has something of a little detective story, but the atmosphere feels almost creepy. Kang Ha-neul ("Squid Game - Season 2") does a decent job as a resident who becomes more and more desperate because apparently someone is playing games with him. He is also not really someone who would be able to defend himself in a physical confrontation. Luckily, there are hardly any moments when you have to roll your eyes because of it - for example, he doesn't stumble over his own feet while fleeing, as is sometimes the case in similar thrillers. But above all, suspense is created by the fact that there is actually something at stake, and the stakes get higher and higher as the minutes go by.

Still, Woo-seong isn't just a loser who is unable to defend himself. He can be quite proactive too. In the course of the movie the mystery of the noise has some twists and turns, and the story can in fact be considered quite good. Nevertheless, it must be criticized that the entanglements get a bit out of hand in the end, so that it will be hard to connect all the details. Maybe that was the point, though, because if you actually tried to do that, some plot holes would most likely come to light. On the other hand, it's fascinating that our hero is obviously one of the good guys, while some other characters clearly fall into the villain category but with different objectives, which means that there are also a few arguments among them. Moreover, it's interesting that when it comes to the characters, especially the penthouse owner played by Yeom Hye-ran ("Citizen of a Kind"), we are not always sure whether they support the protagonist or work against him. This leaves a pleasant atmosphere of uncertainty and puts everything in the realms of possibility.

The entire time "Wall to Wall" reminded me of "Unlocked", and to my surprise (or not) we in fact get the same screenwriter and director with Kim Tae-joon. So, you can't necessarily attest him having a wide range, but fortunately, almost everything he did wrong back then, he does better this time. Specifically, because of its plot holes, "Unlocked" was a frustrating movie, even though the atmosphere turned out all right. "Wall to Wall" eradicates a lot of these problems, while the mood of the thriller is gripping and nerve-wracking too. What’s left to be criticized is the unfortunate dichotomy of the movie and a rather overloaded story, which therefore makes some circumstances less believable. But the incorporated social criticism of the real estate hype and how it is all about location location location - even if that means you have to live in gigantic, uninviting high-rise buildings whose apartments all look the same and have really thin walls -, knows how to please. In addition, the thriller is also convincing in terms of its level of suspense, which means that you finally get a good movie from Korea on Netflix.

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