Forgot password

1999｜116 MIN | Thriller, Mystery

DIRECTOR CHANG Yoon-hyun

CAST HAN Suk-kyu, SHIM Eun-ha, YUM Jung-ah, AHN Suk-hwan, YU Jun-sang 

RELEASE DATE November 13, 1999

CONTACT Mirovision Inc.

Tel +82 2 3443 2568

Fax +82 2 3443 4842

Email jason@mirovision.com

Korean cinema became known around the world for its stylish blood-letting not long after the turn of the millennium, but before that, jets of crimson were a rare sight in local films, which made the hacked limbs and buckets of blood of Tell Me Something a rather shocking affair upon its release in the fall in 1999. Seeing it again almost 18 years after its release, the serial killer chiller may not work quite as well as a horror film, but it remains a satisfyingly dark and twisty murder mystery that upped the gore content for Korean films that would follow.

Following the death of his mother, Detective Jo is suspected of taking money from an illicit source to cover her large medical bills. With that in the background, Jo is assigned to a new case of a brutal serial killer who is chopping up bodies, mixing around their limbs and dropping rubbish bags of human remains all around Seoul, terrorizing the unsuspecting people that come across them. After a little digging, Jo discovers that all of the victims were romantically linked to Soo-yeon, the reserved and enigmatic daughter of a painter. Fearing that the killer will eventually target her, Jo begins to protect the woman. All the while, more bodies pile up around them.

An intriguing combination of “hard-gore” thriller (as it was dubbed at the time of its release) and the local, wistful melodrama that was common in romantic dramas of the period, Tell Me Something is an elaborate mystery that combines a striking soundtrack with artful design. Two years earlier, Director CHANG Yoon-hyun had broken through with the classic melodrama The Contact, the second most popular domestic release of that year, and he carried over much of his penchant for sophisticated drama, as well as his lead HAN Suk-kyu, to his next project, which, along with the firepower of star-of-the-day SHIM Eun-ha (who had already co-starred with HAN in the previous year’s hit Christmas in August), became one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

Coming a few months after both KANG Je-kyu’s Swiri (which also featured HAN) and LEE Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide, CHANG’s film, full of rain-drenched set pieces and inventive gore, was part of the symbolic wave of Korean thrillers made at a time when the industry was beginning to catch up to Hollywood’s output from a technical standpoint.

Of course, Tell Me Something is much more than just a slickly-produced thriller as it also plays with viewer expectations and explores voyeurism in an inventive fashion. Symbolic props and foreshadowing offer clues to the film’s eventual denouement but also add layers to the story’s themes for viewers that want to dig a little deeper. Watch out for both YUM Jung-ah (A Tale Of Two Sisters, 2003) and YU Jun-sang (The Day He Arrives, 2011) in early roles.