Film Reviews

Tell Me Something

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Suk-kyu Han
• Details: South Korea, 118mins, 18s.

Haunted by the death of his mother and under investigation by Internal Affairs, Detective Cho (Han) is handed a major case that is troubling the department: black plastic bags full of dismembered body parts are turning up all over the city and each bag consists of two or three victims. DNA results show that the victims were one time lovers of museum curator Su-yeon (Shim) but she is very tight-lipped when it comes to her past. Feeling that the killer knows more about her than she thinks, Cho moves Su-yeon into his house to protect her and to gain her trust but she is hiding more than previous lovers in her dark past. Tell Me Something will bring obvious comparisons to Se7en but apart from the dark setting and the gruesome murders, the similarities stop there. Where Se7en upped the stakes with each murder, Tell Me Something offers little gore after the initial post mortem scenes. Director Chang repeatedly sends some decent guess work down the wrong alley as he sign posts obvious killers only to switch immediately afterwards - keeping the audience confused as to who the killer is - but he should have spent more time diving deeper into the troubled Cho's life. Alternating between bland and spooky, Tell Me Something could have been a far richer film than it is.

Review by Gavin Burke