HANSEL AND GRETEL

Director: Pil-Sung Yim
Stars: Jeong-myeong Cheon, Shim Eun-kyung, Eun Won-jae, Ji-hee Jin, Hee-soon Park
Year: 2007
Rating: N/R
(in Korean w/English subtitles)

Atmospheric and under-your-skin spooky, Hansel and Gretel is a South Korean take on the dark fairy tale that works on many levels to induce some chills, while not overloading the senses on blood and gore. Like Pan's Labyrinth or The Orphanage, it will entertain and certainly give you the chills in places ... yet also contains a story worth telling that gives the film a deeper meaning by The End.

Jeong-myeong Cheon stars as Eun-soo, a young man driving through a dense countryside on the way to visit his mother, who is very ill. He's on his cell phone when the film opens, arguing with his girlfriend (who is evidently pregnant and wants him home), when his lack of attention to his driving causes him to have an accident that flips his car into a ditch and renders him unconscious. It's still daylight when he comes to, but Eun-soo only makes it a few steps before passing out again from his head injury.

He regains consciousness again hours later, seeing a bright light in the darkness that comes from the lantern of a young, tween girl named Young-hee (Shim Eun-kyung) dressed in a Red Riding Hood-style cape. Still dazed and sore, Eun-soo follows the girl back to her house - a very tidy, neat, picture-perfect little home buried deep in the woods, a sign reading "House of Happy Children" on its fence.

Inside, Eun-soo meets Young-hee's parents, as well as the girl's older brother Man-bok (Eun Won-jae), a brooding 13-year-old - and their younger sister, Jung-soon (Ji-hee Jin). On the surface, they all appear to be the perfect, happy family, and offer Eun-soo a place to stay overnight, as he is still recovering from the accident. Unable to get any cell phone reception to call out (he asks the parents if he could use their phone, but they tell him it's not working and should be fixed tomorrow0, Eun-soo - exhausted - agrees and fairly passes out again in an upstairs bedroom.

The next morning, greeted by the smiling family and a pair of parents who for some reason seem exceptionally nervous - almost scared - behind the grins, Eun-soo is treated to a breakfast of sweets and cakes, the children watching and mimicking his every move as he eats. He asks about a way out of the forest, or for a ride to the highway, when the father tells him this is his day off work instead directing him out of the woods on foot. Eun-soo leaves soon after, but learns quite quickly that the woods are very dense and thick, and soon he is so lost and disoriented, finding nothing even resembling a way out, that by evening he ends up back at the too-perfect little house in the woods, where he has to stay another night - after getting the father a promise to give him a ride out the next day. That night, Eun-soo overhears a mysterious and very physical fight between the parents, shattering the "Brady Bunch" perfectness they've tried to show him so far ...

And the next morning, Eun-soo awakens to three crying children, and a note from the parents asking him to please take care of their kids, as they've had to leave on some sort of an emergency.

But as another day passes with Eun-soo unable to find his way out of the forest - his guilt over leaving the children (a reminder that he has his own child on the way), soon evaporating as he realizes he is trapped in the woods, in this house ... and with a trio of children determined to never let him leave. And as the days pass, Eun-soo will learn some horrifying secrets about the House of Happy Children, and what happens to those who try to leave it ... as well as some very dark secrets about the three children who've come to call him Uncle - and who aren't quite what they seem.

Hansel and Gretel, while departing significantly from the original children's story, still ties everything into the story of these three children and their "happy" home. Director Pil-Sung Yim has shot the film beautifully, and whether what's going on on-screen is tragic or cute or suspenseful as hell, the film's look alone just sucks you in and envelops you with its bright yet sinister candy-colored moodiness. Jeong-myeong Cheon is wholly sympathetic as Eun-soo, the character the entire film relies on, and from the beginning you root for the guy and are totally on-board with his flight. The young actors playing the three children range are exceptionally talented, especially Eun Won-jae as the rage-filled Man-bok, in an amazing performance that to go on further about might end in revealing too much of the story.

Subtle yet disturbing, with a few jumpy moments and certainly enough creepiness to leave you thinking about the film long after viewing it, Hansel and Gretel is a little chiller that proves "horror" films can get under your skin a lot deeper without all the blood and gore (while I could not find an MPAA rating for the film, my guess is it would be about a PG-13, for some disturbing images and violence). If you get a chance to see it, it's a great film that evokes the true underscore of darkness that all good children's fairy tales have - only here, bumped up another notch. An effective, moody, very well-made thriller with a heart, worthy of adding to your DVD collection. ****1/2 - Reel Awesome-Reel Must-See