The Witch: Subversion Part 1 - FULL LENGTH REACTION

Long post coming lol. This is one of those films that came out of nowhere a few years ago and blindsided me with how much I ended up liking it. The funny thing is one my first watch I basically took in nothing and was basically just impatiently waiting for the action. All the setup was lost on me because the person who told me about the film basically sold it to me as "John Wick meets Upgrade" when in fact this movie is really not quite like that at all. So I was expecting action like 10 minutes in and when I didn't get that action I was just turned off and couldn't take the movie in until we got to the action scenes at the facility. Second watchthrough though (and subsequent ones) I realized how great the first part is though and how much fun her friend and everything else is and now I think I rate it pretty much around where you guys did at like 8 - 9/10. I think what really keeps me coming back is that even knowing the story well by now I just really like what they did with Ja-Yoon and the shifting ways you can perceive her. Because like Matt says this is a pretty familiar story at first: superman type origins, a lot of X-men type stuff that I get reminded of with the facility like with scenes from Logan and general Wolverine backstory, also the memory loss aspect making me think of Bourne. But they did a good job making Ja-Yoon more than straight to DVD X-men with powers. A lot of movies would just kind of run with the initial concept of "girl who was experimented on and has genetic enhancements loses her memory and has to deal with her past" and then she'd resolve it just by being hyperpowerful. If they wanted to do more, I think a lot of the remaining movies would just stop at the second concept, which as Emily mentioned is basically just "make the main character this crazy badass who was in deep cover the whole time" and they'd have her driving off into the night, roll credits. If they did this the basis of the story would kind of ride on the twist, which definitely does play the big part in the story as is, but the movie we got gives us something more by making Ja-Yoon truly care about her parents and giving its own answer to nature vs nurture which is around the film. It really makes her more than what she could be, gives her dimension, and makes her parents key to the story. She's not just a girl who stumbles into her power, because she planned all this on her own: it's *her* story and she has agency in it. But she's also not *just* "crazy powerful X-men Jason Bourne who get to become a horror movie villain", she's a mix of both. I really like it. In terms of the sequel, I'm sorry to disappoint, because I was also disappointed, but there was apparently some weird thing that happened where the director wasn't actually able to get the main actress back to play her role due to some contractual bs at some point. She appears in the movie but the movie does *not* follow her. Also I can only speculate, but if that movie did intend at one point to focus on Ja-Yoon I have to wonder if not being able to get her basically forced the director to do something completely different and he wasn't able to adapt, because as much as I love the first one, the second one just kinda isn't up to par imo. There's a lot of the same elements, its the same director and all, but everything about the sequel just isn't as good or doesn't work as well, except for the action, which is actually wild and the worst action scene from the sequel is as good as the end scene from this movie. If you watch it I will def watch you two go with it though but I don't want to use my rec slot for it atm lol. In terms of fun notes just two: -The two main actresses in the train scene were kind of bothered because they couldn't really make their lines heard with eggs in their mouths lol. In fact the movie has a lot of actual eating scenes which I think I heard isn't often done in Hollywood movies now bc as you noticed, mouth sounds, but also because doing like 20 takes and having to eat food is a great way to give your actors nausea. -And also that the actress that plays Ja-Yoon and the actor who is her rival here play lovers in a romance tv series a few years after this, so this movie occasionally has fans of that series coming back to this movie to see the two's "origins" lol. Oh and also the rival guy plays one of the main characters in Parasite so he's doing well I imagine

Kelvin