The Sin - More than a horror movie

Horror has always held a dear place in my heart. From Scream to A Nightmare In Elm's Street, Friday the 13th, or even more gory stuff like Saw and The Descent, I've seen many, both the staples of the genre and more low budget movies where you are often able to find hidden gems, or in some cases movies that are so bad they are actually good (such as Altitude). Yet, and especially when it comes to western cinematography, it's rare to find a horror movie - or movies in general - that resonate deeply with me. At most I could name a few movies across genres and decades, one such movie being What Keeps You Alive. It's not perfect, there are many flaws and the ending sucks, but it's as close as I've gotten when it comes to horror.

Until now. For a couple of day I've been feeling the itch to watch a horror movie, and after looking through what the Hollywood has put out in 2024, it was obvious I wasn't going to find anything worthwhile. So I decided to look elsewhere, and came across The Sin. The premise immediately sold me to it:

Si-young has been chosen to play the lead role in an experimental art film centered around her dance major. Along with her college friend Chae-yoon, they perform geometric dance routines as part of a shamanic ceremony as directed by the film's director. However, their world is turned upside down when a production team member suddenly falls from the roof, but their seemingly lifeless body begins to move and come to life.

From the very beginning of the movie, there's an eerie feeling present: a shot of a mountain accompanied with tense music and creepy, chanty, whispery voice that might seem cliche or even tacky, yet at the same time suggested a higher potential of the film.

The main character is Si-young, to whom we're introduced as she attends an audition for the lead role in a movie. Oddly, she's offered neither the script nor synopsis of the movie - "it's a dance film" the director explains - and when she offers to demonstrate her ability he refuses, before stating "Let's do this project together." The scene of her audition is interlaced with her sitting at a table and staring into the distance, which is where we return to after her audition and it's followed with a small jump scare that serves to bring her - and us - into the present. As Si-young heads towards the filming location, she notices a car accident through the bus window, and we get several different flashbacks from her memory - a close up shot of a woman upside down with her face covered in blood, a girl drowned in a river, Si-young sitting in a hospital, and her laying on her back seemingly after an accident, with medics telling her to open her eyes.

None of this boded well. Many western horror movies, lower budget ones especially, tend to do this sort of thing where they rely on cheap, obvious jump scares, often signifying that other parts of the movie will also lack something, such as good acting, story, kills, or even horror itself. Furthermore, the flashbacks have already began to illustrate her background; she was in an accident of a sort, someone died, perhaps she was or feels responsible for it, and it clearly haunts her. It felt predictable. I was already preparing myself for disappointment, something that happened several times throughout the movie simply because I'm used to it.

As she arrives at the filming location, we get an unnerving sense that something more is happening beyond what we can see - and she herself is sensing it. She has a small exchange with the taxi driver who, for some reason, decided not to run the meter as he drove her. The filming location is set in the middle of nowhere, and as she approaches the building to join the filming team, she hesitates, stops, and looks around. Of course, this is accompanied with tense music that felt quite cliche. Just as I again started to believe that this movie was going to be predictable, well - I'm not going to spoil it, but something happened that made me wonder: maybe, just maybe, I was wrong?

Shortly afterward we are introduced to various characters, including Chae-yoon, a colleague of Si-young whom she knows personally and who was going to share the screen with her. More flashbacks are shown, some of which reveal details about the role she’s expected to play, and then the filming begins - this is when we get another suggestion that there’s more happening here than meets the eye. Then we see more flashbacks, this time showing why she has seemed a bit off from the beginning - migraines she's experiencing, possibly one of (among other) symptoms of PTSD she might have from the accident, with the doctor even stating that it's a miracle she's alive.

All of this occurs in the first 15 minutes of the movie.

Eventually, we get to see the main dance performance, two in fact, which I found quite captivating. The dance routine performed by Chae-yoon - intermixed with dance practice by Si-young - is accompanied by eerie music, and that same chanty, whispery voice from the beginning. It felt perfect.

It's not long after when the feeling of something more is happening here than we can see gets validated, and things quickly spiral out of control. We get shown that there are other people in a building across, doing something - who are they and what they are doing? no one seems to know - and then the deaths start, and the movie takes a turn that I once again thought was predictable, and for a moment I started to wonder if that was all that's going to be to the story... but that wasn’t the case.

As we get into the action and "horror" of the movie and Si-yeong, Chae-yoon, and several others try to save themselves, there's some well done jump scares, which by the way occur less and less the further you get into the movie. We also get more background information about the characters that explains some of the things going on in the movie along with some of their motivations. Then, we get introduced to another group of people; this is followed with more deaths, and eventually, seemingly, salvation.

With the end approaching, it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems. There are many twists and turns, more exposition, and some impressive editing on which the movie heavily relies. It’s not something that I usually like, at least not when a movie incorporates flashbacks and relies on them to carry the story, but as can be seen here - thanks to the director & writer Dong Seok Han - the issue isn't with the method itself, but with the ability to utilize it properly and to make people care enough to want to see the exposition, which he does so masterfully that it makes it hard to believe this is his first feature length movie.

Then the ending comes, and honestly, it felt both good and fitting, both for this movie and as a movie that’s part of the horror genre. This ending, together with the directing and the story is what separates it from most other horror movies, especially western horror movies.

While the movie ends in a way that leaves room for a sequel, its ending is yet another thing that sets it apart from the movies of the same genre: it doesn’t leave you feeling empty, it doesn’t make you question the purpose of the movie you just watched, and it doesn’t make you wonder why you’ve spent nearly two hours of your life watching it. Together with the story in the second half of the movie, it also achieves something that you don’t often see in this genre - it makes you look at the characters and the whole movie in a different light, and leads you to re-examine the assumptions you made throughout the movie.

Those "cheap” jump scares rather than being meant to just scare the viewer, instead served to re-affirm the eerie atmosphere that was present from the beginning; the seemingly predictable background details instead demonstrate the director’s editing and storytelling ability, and one of the plot points, which to me suggested that this movie might turn into a standard fare of a particular sub-genre, is instead merely a small part of the overall story, untilized for the story rather than being relied on to carry it. It’s also worth mentioning actresses Kim Yoon Hye and Song Yi Jae have done an excellent job.

Overall, it’s one of the few movies that I intend to revisit in the future, and it’a movie I definitely recommend watching; at least to those who like horror movies, but also like seeing something different within the genre, especially when something different is masterfully done, as is the case here.