Back in September, ShockTillYouDrop.com had a chance to talk with Korean filmmaker Im Sang-Soo about his remake of the 1960 thriller The Housemaid.
Thrillers can take all sorts of paths to burn their way into a moviegoer’s mind, sometimes involving things we deal with every day, but other times, dealing with situations we can only imagine. The latter is the case with The Housemaid, Im Sang-Soo’s reworking of a classic Korean thriller of the same name from 1960 into the story of a poor, young woman (Jeon Do-youn) who is put through a horrible ordeal by the rich people who hire her as their nanny. This isn’t necessarily a scary movie as much as one that’s just so creepy, not only due to the sexual advances the master of the house makes on the new nanny, but also what his conniving wife and mother do in order to make her life hell when they learn she’s become pregnant.
Previously, Director Im helmed the political dark comedy The President’s Last Bang, about the assassination of a political figure at a time when Americans weren’t exactly thrilled wth their own President. The Housemaid uses similarly dark socio-political humor to explore the relationship with rich people and their servants and what the former will do in order to cover up their misdeeds, especially when they have enough money to throw at every problem that arises. It may not sound like much in the scares department, but the filmmaker was clearly influenced by Hitchcock and one of the very first “creepy kid” horror movies The Omen and one expects the inevitable American remake will go even further into that realm. Even so, Im’s film is pretty sick, especially a climactic twist that few will see coming.
You can read the interview with the Korean filmmaker over on ShockTillYouDrop.com!
