A dark stormy night at a deserted hotel is the setting for some unexpected violence.
Han Min and Lee Ju-seung play a duo of deplorable hotel clerks in the Korean film The Guest. Working at their sleazy hotel is not just a dead end job. It’s a soul deadening job. As well as manning the desk and emptying the trash, these clerks install spy cameras in rooms so they can film guests’ intimate moments as a way to pay off the debt they owe a gangster. Han’s character is pretty blasé about filming and selling the spyware footage. What’s the big deal? Whereas Lee’s character does it reluctantly. He knows what he’s doing is wrong, but he needs the money for his mother’s operation. Having that glimmer of a conscience does not endear him to the gangsters, who propose a way to end their arrangement once and for all. If the clerks fill a four terabyte disc with footage of some kinky sexual encounters, they will be free of their financial obligations. Four terabytes might take a few encounters.
The Guest takes a tried-and-true horror film formula—a dark stormy night and a seedy isolated hotel— and filters it through the lens of a real-life issue. It’s the problem of privacy, which is increasingly something that needs to be protected in any highly connected society. Yes, there are a lot of CCTV cameras everywhere, blatantly waiting to capture your every move, but there’s also a molka problem in South Korea, that is hidden spy cameras that are illegally installed in women’s restrooms or in hotel rooms. The number of spy camera incidents has increased during the last decade. In a 2019 incident more than 800 couples were live-streamed having sex in 30 motels. The videos were posted online and accessible for a subscription fee.
Like many of their real life counterparts, the clerks in The Guest want to capture explicit footage, preferably something kinky. What they get instead is so depraved they have to reconsider their priorities. Their first potentially kinky guest arrives with an unconscious woman thrown over his shoulder. Dead giveaway that it’s time to call the police? Nope. They know something is wrong when he asks for a room, but decide not to intervene. They do, however, keep watching. Decisions have consequences.
If you’re a fan of slasher films and like stories where things unexpectedly jump out of the dark, this film has plenty of both—plenty of nimble axe moves and a killer that just won’t die. The victim is played by Oh Hye-won, who recently played a police officer in A Killer Paradox. Lee Ju-seung appeared in the dramas Like Flowers in Sand, Black Knight and Happiness, as well as the film Socialphobia. Han Min appeared in Twinkling Watermelon and You Are My Spring. Jeong Su-kyo, who plays the killer, can be seen in the dramas Miss Night and Day and Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938.
The film was directed by Yeon Je-gwang, who directed the 2019 film Alien. The Guest will have its North American premiere on July 22 as part of the New York Asian Film Festival. It will be shown at Walter Reade Theater, Film at Lincoln Center. The director and actor Lee Ju-seung will be available for an intro Q&A. The New York Asian Film Festival is co-presented by the New York Asian Film Foundation and Film at Lincoln Center.
