Film, Horror
South Korean “Quiet Place” Thrills
New Thriller MIDNIGHT is a Heart-Pounding Exploration of Deafness
After all, horror loves nothing if not capitalizing on putting women in danger.
If you loved A Quiet Place (2018) and K-dramas, Midnight (Tving, 2021) is the thriller for you. The film follows the story of Kyung Mi (played by Ki-Joo Jin), a deaf woman working at a call center where her coworkers constantly ridicule her. When Kyung Mi finds an injured woman on her way home, she is forced into the path of a serial killer (played by the creepily swoon-worthy Wi Ha-Joon). What results is a horrific chase through the city to save both the young woman and her own mother.
The fear here is not just a young woman having to try and protect herself and others from an ax-wielding killer, but the added tension of her inability to communicate or hear potential threats.
It’s important to note that Ki-Joo Jin is not a deaf actress, and neither is
Hae-Yeon Ki, who plays the main character’s deaf mother. The lack of representation of deaf actors limits the movie somewhat for those who are familiar with deaf culture, as there are a few stereotypes that play out such as the character’s speech being overly stunted (while some deaf people cannot speak, there are some who learn to or developed deafness later in life) or the disregard that while cell phones play a major role in the movie, many deaf people use text-to-speech apps which would prevent some of the misunderstandings the characters encounter. And to me, the signing seemed far too dramatic, but I’m not an expert on how Korean Sign Language is different than American Sign Language (and I am not deaf).
That being said, the movie delivers satisfying thrills and intense chases. The film draws on the concept of silence to create fear in the viewer as we watch the protagonist unaware that she is being stalked by the killer. There are many night scenes that utilize the city setting to great effect, with jump-scares like the leading lady nearly running into traffic or not hearing oncoming bikes. Lots and lots of running.
The scene where Kyung Mi finds the injured woman is particularly effective. A white heeled shoe is thrown into the street and Kyung Mi turns to look into a pitch-black alleyway. An injured woman is breathing heavily and crying for help, but Kyung Mi can’t hear her.
Midnight casts light on the issue of both representation and awareness of deafness in South Korea. The debut director Kwon Oh-Seung stated in an interview that he got the idea when he was at a cafe and he witnessed a deaf woman struggling to communicate and someone touched her and she jumped in fear (Korea Times). Kwon Oh-Seung also wrote the tightly scripted screenplay, which mixes horror and humor.
The film has many clever uses of deaf assistive devices to invoke terror. The lights that deaf people use in their homes to indicate sound (such as a doorbell) or in their cars to alert for sirens become instruments of fear when utilized by a serial killer.
In South Korea, deafness is rare and is estimated at .46% of the population or about 255,000 people, according to a 2018 report in Nature. In 2014, protestors held a sit-in at the National Assembly in Seoul’s Yeouido neighborhood, where one protestor reported not having necessary access to an interpreter during surgery at a hospital. Sueo, or hand language, is the term used for Korean Sign Language. Services such as interpreters are limited, with only 1,134 interpreters in the entire country according to one source (Hankyoreh).
There were several moments in the film that also capitalized on the fear of being a young woman in a teeming city. Women will recognize the anxiety of walking down a deserted hallway, or deciding to trust an unknown man, or running from a would-be assailant. The film also seems to comment on the inaccessibility of CCTV stations — as when the woman uses one to alert the police, she is unable to communicate with them.
There is also a deeper cultural discussion to be had here regarding assaults on women in South Korea. According to one article, “in 2019 women accounted for 98 percent of victims in the nearly 10,000 cases of crimes against intimate partners, and the Korea Women’s Hotline estimated that a woman was killed or nearly killed every 1.8 days that year. Korean women account for more than half of all homicide victims, making it one of the highest rates of female murder in the world.”
Overall, Midnight is an interesting and empathetic exploration of deafness and womanhood in South Korea. The writing is clever and forces the viewer to think through what the heroine’s next actions will be, and the women in the movie shine as intelligent and fierce. After all, horror loves nothing if not capitalizing on putting women in danger. The sound direction in the movie seems particularly clever, utilizing silence and sudden onslaughts of sound as well as lip-reading to invoke fear in the audience.
One of the most compelling moments in the movie is when Kyung Mi is pleading with her assailant, explaining how she wants to get married, have children, and live out the rest of her life. It struck me that this was the director’s way of building empathy for deaf people — by saying that like everyone, they just want to live their lives and be happy. It’s a moment that’s well-acted and honest, heart-warming but not in a way that minimizes the reality of the situation.
All in all, I enjoyed this one and was glad for the ending. Everyone in the screening I saw clapped when the baddie got his, and it was fun to root for the main character. Midnight is not yet out on streaming networks, but I’d bet it gets picked up soon. It would be a shoo-in for Netflix.
Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go on a run, just in case.
This film is reviewed as part of Interstellar Flight Press’ coverage of the Alamo Drafthouse Fantastic Fest 2021. We thank Alamo Drafthouse for providing a free screening of this film.
Interstellar Flight Magazine publishes essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.” We use affiliate links and Patreon to pay our writers. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
