Who hasn’t woken up from being blind drunk to discover a dead body they may or may not have been responsible for? Boy if had a nickel … Seriously, that’s quite a dilemma, huh? You wake up alone Next Door to your apartment and nobody is there but a dead body in a pool of blood, and you may or may not be holding the murder weapon, a big glass paper weight. Well … whatchagonnado?
The tool is Chan-Woo Kim (Dong-Min Oh), a fairly mediocre young man with an unfortunate penchant for getting drunk when he should be studying and blacking out when he should be remembering. Chan-Woo has one of those potentially “life changing” exams the next day and he needs to be studied and sharp, so naturally the poor kid –literally, poor, btw; part of the plot here is Chan-Woo hasn’t two jeons to rub together — and if he fails this exam, his future might be no-Lee jeons forever.
So after promising himself “one drink,” Chan-Woo wakes up next to a body. In a way, this might be the ultimate wake-up call. If Chan-Woo survives this experience, maybe he will be put on a path to a more productive life. Part of the issue here is that not only does Chan-Woo recognize his own mediocrity, everybody recognizes it, too, from his drinking buddies to his disparaging parents to the loud mouth Next Door neighbor, Hyun-Min Go (Hee-Jin Choi).
Uh oh. What’s gonna happen when she comes home? Did she have anything to do with this? It’s her apartment? Why
is Chan-Woo in her apartment in the first place? They don’t know one another. Well, they are going to know one another real soon, aren’t they?
Next Door is simple film. This is one of my favorite genres of film, the personal dilemma, and the action is lighter than the dilemma suggests (mostly cuz the kid is probably innocent, just daft). This version starts with essentially one person in Act I and gains one new person per new Act. I find films like this with limited roles and limited sets (not unlike a play) are generally and ironically better written than their unlimited rivals. The reason is simple – with one person driving all the action, you really have to get inside his head; this is a great tool for the audience to consider what they would do in a similar situation. I’m not going to call Next Door a must see, but this is a decent watch for all us amateur psychologists.
Waking with a corpse next to the man
He couldn’t remember how it all began
What happened last night?
Was there some sort of fight?
Dunno either, but he better have a plan
Rated 16+, 92 Minutes
Director: Ji-ho Yeom
Writer: Ji-ho Yeom
Genre: Uh oh
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Puzzle solvers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Rule enforcers
