The movie ‘Hidden Face’ is drawing attention by revealing three key points of fascination, voyeurism, and reversal.

While ‘Soo-yeon was chasing the whereabouts of his missing fiancée ‘Soo-yeon’, ‘Soo-yeon‘s junior ‘Mi-ju’ appears in front of ‘Sung-jin’, and ‘Soo-yeon’, who was thought to have disappeared, is trapped in a secret space closest to them and witnesses her bare face being exposed. The first key point of the unique locked-room thriller ‘Hidden Face’ is the captivating meeting of genre master director Kim Dae-woo and trustworthy actors. Director Kim Dae-woo, who has shown his side as a high-quality storyteller by three-dimensionally unraveling forbidden love and desire through ‘The Bicycle Chronicles’, ‘Obsessed’, is expected to showcase the pinnacle of his unique directing ability that has concentrated his know-how through ‘Hidden Face’. In addition, he has increased the public’s expectations through his reunion with famous actors Song Seung-heon and Jo Yeo-jeong who have captivated the public, and his first meeting with Park Ji-hyun who has shown off her limitless acting spectrum. These characters effectively express the different desires surrounding the secret room as ‘Sung-jin’ (Song Seung-heon), ‘Soo-yeon’ (Jo Yeo-jeong), and ‘Mi-ju’ (Park Ji-hyun), and they display unprecedented acting transformations, increasing the perfection of the play.



The second key point is the unconventional setting of the piece, where the characters are trapped in a secret room and become voyeurs of their love affair, and the directing of the space with outstanding art. The incident reaches a climax when ‘Soo-yeon’, trapped in the secret room, witnesses the love affair between her fiancé ‘Sung-jin’ and her cellist junior ‘Mi-ju’ from the closest distance. In particular, the delicate lighting arrangement in this scene shows a distinct contrast of light and dark inside and outside the secret room, and fully reveals the characters‘ changing relationships and emotional changes, maximizing the immersion of the play. Also, in the scene where ‘Sung-jin’ and ‘Mi-ju’ are having sex, the careful spatial direction that excluded artificial lighting as much as possible so that the various layers of emotions felt by them could be naturally followed multiplied the advantages of a unique locked-room thriller.



The last key point of ‘Hidden Face’ is the unpredictable story development with repeated twists. The pain of his fiancée disappearing is fleeting, and the thrilling relationship between ‘Sung-jin’, who reveals his hidden desires without reservation, and ‘Mi-ju’, who carelessly snatches the empty seat, gives the audience a fresh shock. In addition, the plot twist where ‘Soo-yeon’, who was thought to have disappeared, is trapped in a locked room closer than anywhere else and witnesses her lover ‘Sung-jin’’s exposed desires, brings the genre-specific fun of locked-room thrillers to its peak. In this way, the tangled relationships of the three characters unfold into an unpredictable story that portrays secrets that cannot be told and inner selves that have not been looked into in a three-dimensional manner centered around a locked room, raising the expectations of potential viewers.

‘Hidden Face’, a unique locked room thriller that stimulates the desire to watch by revealing three key points of fascination, voyeurism, and reversal, will be released in theaters on Wednesday, November 20.

Choi Yoon-na, Donga.com Reporter yyynnn@donga.com