Pluto is a brilliantly chilling film from South Korea. My own regret is that I suspect it is also a
much more biting satire than I was able to realise as I didn't know anything about
South Korea’s school system or class structure beforehand.
It opens with the murder of the star pupil, Yujin, at an
elite boarding school on the eve of the highly competitive national exams for
entry to the top universities. The
chilling tone is set by the callous indifference with which the murder is met –
from his school, his friends, his family, even the initial suspect is more
concerned with whether this will affect his academic performance than the fact
that a murder has happened. Only the
police are concerned about what has happened.
As the truth of what has been going on in the school, and
the intense competition that the students are driven into, is revealed, the
film only becomes more and more unsettling.
Only one character is even remotely likeable, although the central
character also caught up in this is very compelling even as his choices become
less forgivable. This makes the film
eerily fascinating and utterly horrifying.
The film has a good deal of visual flair, infusing the film
with more and more creepiness and unease.
Yujin’s laconic bitterness, June’s furious determination and the other
school kids bratty entitlement mix together superbly and make the film an even
more tense and intense experience, building to a heart stopping stand-off.
Although deliberately
exaggerated and heightened in both plotting and emotion, the film doesn’t lose
the viewer but instead draws them in further to the melodrama. At times I’m not sure I was still
breathing. It unwinds at its own pace
making the punctuations of violence even more shocking. This easily could have turned schlocky or
incredible (I can imagine some people will find it so) but I felt that it
packed so much in yet contained it so well that I was gripped from beginning to
end.
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