It’s the Booze Talkin’: Park Chan-wook = overrated?

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Now that we’re finally veering towards the end of February and this week marking the first movies to be released in March, I’m hoping we’re finally out of the slow-movie slump and are ramping up towards bigger and better things in the name of horror. With THE LAST EXORCISM PART II and STOKER coming out this week, things are looking up. Or at least it’ll be a month that will have something good to offer (since LAST EXORCISM PART II kind of looks lame). STOKER is the movie that people are really blowing a load over, both critics and fans alike, and I’ll admit the trailers leave a lot to be desired (mostly because I’m still not entirely sure is going on). STOKER looks like it has potential to be freaky… and that has nothing to do with director Park Chan-wook.

Half the love that seems to be pouring out over STOKER so far (both by those who have seen it and those who haven’t) is that it’s from Chan-wook, the same guy who directed THIRST and THE VENGEANCE TRILOGY (which includes OLDBOY, SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, and LADY VENGEANCE). People seem to love this guy like he’s the next messiah in filmmaking, like he’s on the same caliber as horror greats like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Sam Raimi. Literally no one speaks bad about this dude and it drives me f*cking crazy because I’m the motherf*cker that’s not ashamed to admit that his movies are overrated! There, I said it!

Holy crap, that felt good to get off my chest. I haven’t seen all of the man’s movies, but I have seen all of the films in the VENGEANCE trilogy and those movies were just OK. They weren’t great, there wasn’t anything exceptionally awesome about them–they were simply OK little revenge thrillers… and that’s about it. OLDBOY… everyone, even Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg, is a fife for OLDBOY and I simply can’t see it. The story is good, the acting is descent enough, and the movie is just OK (at best), but it’s not the masterpiece everyone on the planet makes it out to be. In my horrible opinion, it’s no more than other revenge thrillers along the lines of the RANSOM. Yup, that Ron Howard directed Mel Gibson movie did more for me than OLDBOY ever could. And yet, no one’s sucking the cock off every new Howard movie these days, are they?

The same could be said for SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and LADY VENGEANCE… just ok revenge thrillers, and below the majority of epic revenge thrillers that Hollywood likes to puke out every quarter. Give me the remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE before making me sit through Chan-wook’s VENGEANCE trilogy again. These movies are just kind of boring to sit through… they feel really long and there’s not enough action or actual revenge to pull me through it. Maybe it’s a language barrier thing, maybe I’m an asshole who doesn’t like reading his movies (and who can’t stand dubbing), but then I think back to all of the foreign subtitled movies I really like and realize this can’t be the case… I just don’t like what Chan-wook has to offer.

Maybe it’s the booze talking, but acclaimed directed Park Chan-wook does absolutely nothing for me. I know I’m in the minority (hell, I could be the only one who feels this way), but OLDBOY and the rest of the VENGEANCE trilogy are overrated, boring, and not worth the hype they receive in the least. I didn’t even see THIRST because it was a love story about vampires (i.e., TWILIGHT) and it was from the guy who directed OLDBOY (overrated thriller). So I didn’t deem it worthy of my time and passed… and I have no desire to ever return and check it out. Why? Because… you guessed it. Park Chan-wook isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. With STOKER coming out this week, I likely won’t go see it in theaters, but I probably will catch it on video as it looks crazy and who knows, it could be pretty good… but my hopes aren’t all that high that I’ll like it. And honestly, the likelihood that I’ll think this one is overrated is pretty goddamn high too.