I am pleasantly surprised to know that a respectable actor like Kang Ha Neul is actually the protagonist in this mystery-thriller film ‘Forgotten‘. Of course, his character doesn’t deviate much from his usual geeky roles, but he continues to show his charm in such a genre despite the tragedy that comes after.
The movie alone, though loses its fire at the ending, stands out because of its unconventional way of story telling that totally duped me into thinking what is in front of me is real when everything was just nothing but a lie to uncover a truth that had been missing for so many years.
The Story
Jin Seok (Kang Ha Neul) moves into anew home with his family–his mother, father and older brother who had a limp on his leg. He suffers from hypersensitivity, but with medication he is able to live normally.
One night, while it was raining hard, JIn Seok witnesses his older brother Yoo Seok (Kim Moo Yul) being kidnapped by a group of men that dumped him into a van and left. After nineteen days of being gone, Yoo Seok suddenly returns home, but he doesn’t remember anything from his disappearance. Jin Seok, on the other hand, starts noticing some changes about his older brother, including the limp on his leg being gone, making Jin Seok’s suspicion grow about his brother. It doesn’t help that Jin Seok keeps hearing sounds from the locked room where the house’ previous owner stored his belongings, making him even more paranoid of his surroundings and the people around him.
Thoughts:
‘Forgotten’ fooled me into believing that all is good between Jinseok, his brother and his family. I would have been thankful to have someone like Yoo Seok as a brother too, but the too much mystery surrounding him eventually gave a strong feeling that something is definitely up with the perfect older brother. However, it was far from the psychotic brother I thought he will turn into. It made everything I visioned actually wrong just when I thought I could predict what’s to come next.
Plus, that locked room right across their room constantly brought chills to my spine as we were duped into thinking that some ugly ghost would actually pop out from that room when it was nothing but a stupid prop to the real setup of the story. The movie almost turned into a horror story, but I guess that’s their sly strategy to fool us and overwhelm us with something else. And gosh, that worked on me.
I skipped some parts when it came to the locked room and whenever Jin Seok was investigating about his odd older brother who came back, because I couldn’t really tell what was to come next. It frustrates me that I am kept in the dark, but then as I skim through the entire story, I think it’s amazing how they came up with how the entire film was executed. It may seem confusing to an outsider because the film didn’t start in the order where it was supposed to show the past, but I think the sequencing, the plot itself is intelligently written and done.
I was so mind-blown when I realized who Jin Seok and Yoo Seok really is, since they aren’t who we think they really are.
Jin Seok thinks he’s still back in the 90s when all he needs to think about is passing his exams, but then the reality is it’s already the 21st century and Jin Seook is nothing but a lonely old man, who is the suspect to a crime years ago and is being unwillingly and unknowingly dragged back to the house where he allegedly killed a wife and a daughter. The happenings of that year were reenacted together with the help of undercovers who wanted to know the truth of that night and pretended to be his family members.
Because apparently, he accepted the task from someone called ‘Bluebeard’ on the internet to kill his wife and claim his insurance money that he thinks will better the lives of his daughter and son. Out of pure desperation to get Jin Seok’s older brother have his operation, he takes the bait, but unfortunately also kills Bluebeard’s daughter. That night he’s also seen by the son, who Jin Seok fooled into counting to a hundred ten times in his room, so he could make his escape.
Later, Jin Seok finds out that his brother’s surgeon was actually in fact the same ‘Bluebeard’ that assigned him to kill his wife in exchange for money. Bluebeard eventually hears from his son over the phone that both his wife and daughter is killed. He is struck with grief and somehow he ends up with a brawl with Jin Seok and he’s thrown of the edge of the rooftop of the hospital. Jin Seok was able to hold onto him, but the doctor’s hand slipped and he died.
Years later, after the case of the mother and daughter being killed was closed and buried under the mud, some detective who is adamant to solve the case finds Jin Seok and tortures him while telling him to confess his crimes. Jin Seok apparently deletes the distressful memory of those times and denies he had killed them. So, out of desperation of the authority to know the truth, they devised a plan that will make him remember the past: lead him to believe that his family is still alive and go back to the crime scene to later reenact that night.
In the first scene, if you will remember, this is the part when he is seen in a car with his family. They were moving to their new house, which was actually the real crime scene. That’s why Jin Seok feels familiar when he sees the house. It’s because he had been there before.
Jin Seok also hears something from the locked room, because stupidly enough there were people there watching everything that they were doing from a monitor screen. It wasn’t because it was haunted. Then the time Jin Seok sees his brother being kidnapped, it was actually when Yoo Seok was taken by the real police for doing an illegal investigation of the past crime. He wasn’t able to come home for 19 days because he had to pull some strings to get out.
By the time he was back home, Jin Seok has become even more sensitive and suspicious. He was able to discern between his dreams and reality and somehow realized the changes in Yoo Seok. One, he doesn’t have a limp because he’s never gotten into an accident. Two, Yoo Seok is in connivance with the police that went to their home to investigate, because they are actually in the same boat and they are the people in the locked room.
Until such night happened when Jin Seok heard his fake mom talking over the phone to Yoo Seok, telling him her observations. Jin Seok tries to cover up his own undercover, but he eventually gets caught. And when he managed to run away and go to the real police, that’s when he figured out he’s not really a twenty year old teen but instead a wrinkly old man born in the 70s. It devastated him to know this, but Jin Seok eventually gains back his memory afterwards.
There are some struggles that led him to being confined in a hospital bed and Yoo Seok admitting to the twisted truth. The fact that Yoo Seok is actually the same son whose family died and was left alone to fend for himself. He tries to inject something to Jin Seok’s IV to eventually kill him for what he’d done, but Yoo Seok changes his mind and drops the injection because he knew that behind his mother and sister’s death is an even worse man, ‘Bluebeard’. His father.
Tragically, in the end, Yoo Seok jumps to his death and out of guilt, Jin Seok injects the solution that Yoo Seok was supposed to use on him and he eventually dies.
The plot twist and execution is really daebak. They made a total fool out of me for most of the movie and saved itself in the last 30 minutes by revealing the cruel truth. However, the intelligent plot creation becomes forgettable because of how things wrapped up: everyone dies.
I mean, it’s sad enough that Jin Seok killed somebody out of desperation and someone manipulated him and made him waste two years of his life while deceiving him. But what tops death in the ending? This is the type of film I absolutely hate. If ain’t for that plot twist and the flashback in the credits, my heart wouldn’t have softened for this film.
If you’re wondering what happened then, they showed one of Jin Seok’s happy memories when he’s being greeted by his family from the other side of a lake. He smiles happily at them, but then meets a little boy, who he runs into and talks to with a grin on his face. The boy is later whisked away by his family, but at the same time that boy’s memory of Jin Seok was very pleasant. He clearly liked the younger version of Jin Seok.
That same boy Jin Seok met by the lake, however, is the same man whom he took away a family from, Yoo Seok.
Looking back, those are time when you’ll think, fate has its cruel way of letting two people meet twice. Once, when they were both happy. But because of our bad choices, somehow we end up meeting these people, we once before came across with, in a bad situation later. If only those happy times could be preserved, but then again fate has its way of mocking us back.
Over all, the movie is great if you don’t mind tragic endings. The execution, plot twist and acting is quite flawless. The movie is also able to set a mood that is deceiving in the beginning, leading us to the eventual turn of events we will not ever expect, which is really good. The tone of the movie, however, is pretty dark. It’s a film genius, but I don’t think people will have the same opinion about it like how critiques would praise it for its unique strategy, especially with all of them dying.
Rating:
I would have really hated the film because of the sad ending, though it’s a genius in the way sequencing was done and how they deceivingly and strategically filmed the entire thing. Luckily, the last few minutes were worth the watch. Poignant and nostalgic, yet smacks some life lessons into you. Rating this film, I’ll give it a 3.9 out of 5.