[Film Review] A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003)

Kim Jee-Woon’s A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003) is the highest grossing South Korean horror film and was also the first to be screened in American cinemas. Spinning it’s tangled and traumatic web, the film demonstrates in breathtakingly beautiful tones how guilt and shame can manifest in this creepy yet heartbreaking supernatural psychological drama.

Su-mi, hauntingly played by the fantastic Im Soo-jung, is a teenager who has returned with her father and younger sister Su-yeon (Moon Geun-young) to the family’s isolated country house after receiving treatment in a care facility for psychosis and other mental health problems. Upon her return, familial relationships within the household grow tense and begin to twist, especially between the sisters and their step-mother, the cold and oftentimes maniacal Eun-joo (Yum Jung-ah). The dwelling that houses this broken family seems to be haunted, and not just by the ghosts that walk it’s rooms. 

There is something very unique and extraordinary about cinema born out of South Korea. It’s filmmakers seem to be able to create celluloid magic, with ingredients consisting of emotive narration and character development mixed with exquisite visuals and cinematography that bewitch audiences from opening credits to the final titles. It’s no wonder that directors such as Park Chan-wook (The Vengeance Trilogy [2003-2005], Stoker [2013]) and Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho (Host [2013], Parasite [2019]) have become some of the most sought after filmmakers internationally.  A Tale Of Two Sisters, written and directed by Kim Jee-woon, is no exception to this.  

Beginning with the opening title sequence, the audience are treated visually to intricate and ornate wallpaper, staring straight back at us with its ocular like pattern, letting us know from the very beginning that the domestic setting is always watching and will play an anthropomorphic role in the tale to come. The images of the wallpaper and the colour theory within the film are heightened. Bold colours are pushed to the foreground as they represent each character and it becomes of utmost importance to the intricate story that plays out, acting as somewhat of a foreshadowing as to the events that begin to unfold.  

A Tale of Two Sisters is a modern retelling of the South Korean folktale Janghwa Hongryeon jeon from the Joseon Dynasty and this fairy tale element is woven all the way through the picture. From its depiction of an evil stepmother to the representation of a princess trapped inside her own mental prison-which is then partnered with a string heavy score reminiscent of a Hitchcock thriller- all of this evokes a fairy tale harking back to the bloody and grim traditions of folklore. The plot at its basic core, is predictable, however the emotionally intriguing journey on which viewers are led, distracts from this foreseeable factor.   

The horror elements of this supernatural chiller are at times downright terrifying, relying heavily on the quietly creeping atmosphere, seamlessly blending bleak reality with hallucinatory nightmares to create heart pounding jump scares that James Wan could learn a lesson from. Unlike scares employed by big budget Hollywood horrors, the moments of pure horror in A Tale of Two Sisters are neither artificial nor fleeting, with the visceral reaction continuing long after the initial fright has happened. 

A Tale of Two Sisters is at its core a movie about a haunted house. This haunted house, however, is not one made of brick and mortar, but one which a person is trapped in within their own mind, skeletons in closets hiding within the cranial lobes and incorporeal manifestations of anger and guilt. As Coco Chanel once said: “Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death” and A Tale of Two Sisters is a beautiful, yet terrifying embodiment of that.

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