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| Devils Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival |
A volatile body-swap thriller full of twists and turns and spectacular action sequences, Devils was a hit with the audience at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and has firmly established its director, Kim Jae-hoon, as one to watch. It stars Oh Dae-hwan and Jang Dong-yoon as a cop and a serial killer involved in a complicated game of blackmail and betrayal as they try to track down mutual enemies, all the while seething at each other. Kim and I found a little time during the festival to talk about it – in a very careful way, because there are a lot of spoilers involved, but you won’t see them here. I began by asking him what led him to take on such a complicated narrative in his début feature.
“I didn't want it to keep simple in terms of my objective in making this film,” he explains, with the help of an interpreter. “I didn't really want to bring a lot of things to the public, but rather I wanted to satisfy the interests and expectations of the audience that likes genre films by giving them tension, thrills and speed, so that this movie can please them.
“In Korea, there have been lots of movies using the theme of body changing, for example The Guy In Me or the movie titled Change, and so on. The list of those movies is long. The main common factors that we can observe are, in terms of body changing, they show exactly what happened and how this body changing became possible. And also, in general, the two characters sympathise with each other and they exchange their thoughts thoroughly.
“In my movie Devils, however, I do not show what happened exactly and how this body changing was possible, and also there is really no shared feeling or understanding between the two characters who go through this body changing, so that is different. In terms of the body changing between serial killer and detective I was much influenced by Face/Off, because I liked it very much. I had an inspiration to make this movie to explore this thing. Also, there is a film called Freaky Death Day, and in that movie also, there is a body changing with a serial killer, but it's a comedy. I got some inspiration from that movie in terms of making this genre movie.”
I ask how he worked with the actors to help them make the body swap convincing – especially Jang Dong-hoon, because older actors generally remember being young but it’s harder for a young actor to play an older character.
“First of all I established the character of Jin-hyeok. For example, I used the music and fashion and the way of walking. All the styles I established first, for instance, the music that he listens to, he composes this music himself in the movie. I tried to show Jang Dong-yoon all these things and make him listen to the music so that he could understand the character and how to perform as the character. In terms of elements like the detective thinking of his daughter and taking care of her, Jin-hyeok is quite young, so he doesn't have this actual experiences in his life yet. But fortunately Jang Dong-yoon was very focused on these aspects when he performed so it came across well in the movie. He could express this caring for others feeling very, very well.”
The two characters also have different fighting styles. Was that important when choreographing the action scenes?
“These two characters hate each other,” he stresses. “They fight with each other not to beat each other but in order to kill each other. So, I asked these two actors to always think about this willingness to kill the other. I wanted to focus and capture this energy that we see from these two characters in the camera. During the filming process, when we were shooting some scenes of fighting with the these two main characters, I tried to separate them from each other so that they could not get along very well and they did not have comradely feelings.”
There’s a very striking scene at the start of the film in which police officers discover Jin-hyeok and some of his associates dismembering a body in a black room full of fluorescent pain. How did that come about?
“They are criminals, they're killers and they're filming as they are killing, so logically, they should hide their faces. I was thinking about what kind of instrument they would use in order to hide their faces. First of all I thought about masks, but I was not very convinced. And I happened to see the music videos of Travis Scott, a hip hop musician. In his music videos he was singing with paint on his face, and I liked it very much. So I was quite inspired and I used this reference.”
We go back to the subject of the music in the film and how it contributes to the story.
“I asked the music director to always maintain the highest tension with his music,” he says. “He focuses very much on that point, so that the audience will always stay on alert and on edge. And also for Jin-hyeok, his music should show what kind of life he had in the past and how he was living. All these stories must be implied by his music.”
We discuss the shoot.
“The most difficult scene to shoot was when Jang Dong-yoon was hanging upside-down,” he says, “because when you are in this state, your eyes become red very quickly, because the blood vessels are damaged very quickly – but in the movie, we did not want to show this. So I had to be very quick in filming. And also, it was quite a challenging moment for him to perform.
“The scene that I am the most proud of was the moment when the two lead characters meet each other for the first time after the body switching. Their confrontation showed a lot of energy from the two characters. I think this scene was quite well directed and all this confrontational energy was very successfully captured by the camera, so I like it very much.”
He’s also very happy about his experience at Fantasia.
“It was a fantastic experience, because of the reactions of the public. The audience was really enthusiastic and it was very different from the audience in Korea. I felt that they really liked this kind of genre film.
“The filming process for my next movie was, in fact, already completed at the beginning of this year,” he says. “So I'm just doing some editing work, and it will be released at the end of this year. The title is The Desperate Chase. It's a more mainstream film that suits the general public. After that, the next movie I'm planning is a kind of drama that will be released online.”
