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A scene from the domestic thriller ``Yoga'' |
By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter
The intention of the horror movie-wannabe ``Yoga'' seems sound enough. Misled desire for eternal beauty and youth leads a group of already perfectly gorgeous women to a sinister place where they all end up screaming and running for their lives.
But beauty has its price, and a horror movie that focuses only on looking good certainly forfeits its scare factor.
Director Yoon Jae-yeon, who made a fantastic feature film debut with ``Wishing Stairs,'' the third in the blockbuster high school horror series, tries to create a ``this could happen to you'' scenario in an urban setting. But she thoroughly disappoints, delivering instead a pitiful B-movie spoof that may, at best, be granted a spot at a minor fantasty film festival.
Singer-turned-actress Eugene stars in the lead role as Hyo-jeong (a.k.a. the one who shrieks the most in the film). Hyo-jeong had been the star host of a home shopping channel until a young beauty pageant queen came along and stole her spot. To add insult to injury, her vain friends dismiss her sweet but penniless boyfriend Dong-hun as ineligible husband material.
One day, Seon-hwa, an old classmate whom Hyo-jeong had shunned for being poor and homely, magically appears looking ― and acting ― like a marble-cut goddess (played by model-turned-actress Lee Yeong-jin). Her secret, she confides, is an intense yoga class run by the retired movie star Gan Mi-hi (played by model Lee Hye-sang, who is strikingly gorgeous in the caricatured role).
Hyo-jeong finds her way to the obscure location of the class, where the equally eerie yoga master Nani greets her (Cha Soo-yeon takes her edgy allure to a near-creepy level).
The protagonist proclaims her wish to trade in her life for a new one, and, as it turns out, a histrionic display of desperation is precisely the way to get into the exclusive class. Such was the case for the other participants: a narcissistic pop singer seeking to reclaim her fading stardom (Park Han-byul), a young woman who lost 20 kilograms but not her obsession with food (Cho Eun-ji), a bitter divorcee with a nose job gone awry (Kim Hye-na), and a quiet girl who isn't as nice as she seems, at least when it comes to becoming pretty (Hwang Seung-eon).
There are strict rules that must be followed: no showering for an hour following training, no eating without permission, no looking in the mirror, no contact with the outside world and no telling about what happens in the institute.
The one-week session is clearly no sorority gathering, especially since only one of the five women will achieve undying beauty through it. This sets the stage for a catty skirmish in the claustrophobic space, with the viewer by this point having a pretty good idea of who's going to break which rule. But any hint of suspense ends there.
The film fails to thrill and instead attempts to distract with a string of poorly rendered reels that are like a cross between cheesy haunted house rides and the noir comedy ``Death Becomes Her'' ― even though it is not meant to be funny at all. ``Yoga'' seems to warn that eternal beauty and youth do not necessarily mean immortality: Just because you turn heads on the street does not mean you can jaywalk without getting run over.
Believability, rather than realism, is expected in horror films ― if it has a solid frame of internal logic, then it can persuade, no matter how bizarre or surreal the plot elements are. ``Yoga'' spins out messy doses of drama and slasher horror without bothering to weave them into anything tangible, and even the striking contrast between beauty and blood fails to compel.
hyowlee@koreatimes.co.kr
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