Thriller 'The Terror Live' puts journalist on spot

TV news anchor-turned-radio host Yoon Young-hwa faces threats himself while broadcasting a live conversation with a terrorist. / Courtesy of Lotte Entertainment

By Yun Suh-young

“The Terror Live,” a new movie about a disgruntled man blowing up Mapo Bridge and inadvertently exposing the vanity and hypocrisy of the media, arrived to an eerie intersection with reality.

This is the same Han River bridge where “male-rights” activist Seong Jae-gi leaped to an unintentional death in a fund-raiser gone wrong (he thought he would survive the jump and attend a barbeque party later), an incident that was turned into a national spectacle by the 24/7 media.

A brave scheduling decision by its filmmakers had the movie released the same day with “Snowpiercer,” Bong Joon-ho’s sci-fi thriller that doubled as perhaps the most anticipated movie of the year.

At least in the opinion of this reporter, Snowpiercer lived up to the hefty expectations and then some. The Terror Live is destined to be buried in the shadows of Bong’s Hollywood debut.

That would be a shame because director Kim Byung-woo’s commercial debut film is solid and indeed a unique addition to Korea’s collection of thrillers. However, its E-Mart brand of social commentary prevents the movie from being truly brilliant.

The movie borrows from films such as “Phone Booth” (2003) or “The Call” (2013), as the terrorist remains invisible for the most part of the story and communicates only by telephone.

A listener calls into the radio show of news host Yoon Young-hwa (Ha Jung-woo) one day and claims he will blow up the Mapo Bridge. Yoon dismisses this as a prank call and then watches in shock as the bridge really explodes and kills innocent people.

Yoon is soon swept over by journalistic greed and grabs the opportunity to broadcast his conversations with the caller live. The caller, who claims to be a construction worker, demands an apology from the President over the death of three of his coworkers who died while fixing the bridge. He says the families of the victims weren’t compensated for the deaths.

At this point, the movie begins to double as a lecture between the conflict of the socially weak, and powerful, which overlaps with “Snowpiercer,” which is about a class struggle inside a train circulating around an otherwise lifeless Earth.

The movie doesn’t show journalists in the most positive light as they end up creating a mess with their competition to boost viewer ratings.Eventually, news presenters on television and radio end up interviewing each other as Yoon’s personal story increasingly becomes a product of their creativity.

Although the movie was mostly shot on one set, a radio booth, the confined space and limited cast (Ha dominates 90 percent of the story) does not hinder the storyline or halve the thrill. Scenes change quickly and the story proceeds with pace. Ha’s performance is enough to capture the audience’s attention for 97 minutes.