SunnyHello
Nice effects though.
Pluskylang
Great Film overall
Forumrxes
Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.
Smallclone100
Wow, where to start with this. Ki Duk Kim has always been a divisive director, with his films showing slow burning, very natural, almost spiritual human traits. This though is like a magnified version of a Ki Duk Kim film. It's low budget, set in a single location, stunningly beautiful, very gruesome in parts, explicit and controversial. It centres around a lonely woman (Hee Jin) who delivers bait to tourist fisherman. What we see unfold is a symbolism heavy ride into a twisted / tumultuous relationship between Hee Jin and a visitor. It's full of breathtaking cinematography, sparse dialogue and one of the most stomach churning suicide attempts I've ever seen on screen. As usual with Ki Duk Kim, water as a symbol is featured heavily, and so are animals and nature. Quite why certain little creatures are sacrificed on screen I'm not sure though. A warning to anyone who is easily offended by animal cruelty - don't watch this movie.What does it all mean in the end? I'm torn between it being an entire metaphor for how difficult relationships can be / an exploration into gender roles or a simple descent into madness tale. Maybe all 3. It is a heck of an experience though. Think of a Pedro Almodóvar movie mixed with a bit of Takashi Miike, maybe with a bit of Haneke in there too, and you may get the picture.It's beautiful yet gruesome. I have to take a mark off for the animal cruelty, as it is bordering on unacceptable levels at times, but it still gets a 7.5/10
redrobin62-321-207311
I gotta give it to the makers of 'The Isle'. Really, they should get a 10 for originality because there are quite a lot of things you'll see here that, I assure you, exists in no other film.At the risk of ruining the element of surprise for you I won't say what you'll see; suffice it to say, this film is worth your attention because watching it feels like you're peeking into a world quite unlike any you've seen on Earth. That's the feeling I got, anyway, like it was a surreal movie filmed on Jupiter and exported down here to us.I get this feeling that the makers actually sat down and said, "You know what? Cinema is redundant these days. There's nothing original anymore. All the dramas are the same. All the thrillers are the same. All the horrors are carbon copies of each other. Let's go out of our way to present something, with the limited budget we have, that an audience has never seen before." And they succeeded.Again, I'm not giving anything away other. The film, as presented, is absolutely sublime. The cinematography alone is worth the price of admission; everything else you see on screen is just icing on the cake. Definitely one of the best Korean films ever.
Anssi Vartiainen
The Isle is one of the few movies I've seen in a long time where silence is used to its full extent. It's a movie of very little music, very few lines of dialogue and even the ambient sound is that hollow echo of a lake where everything is muted and misty. And yet it works so well for the purposes of this particular story.Hee-jin (Jung Suh) is a mute young woman who runs and maintains a removed lake fishing resort where a fleet of floating cabins are rented for those wanting peace and quiet. Most of her usual customers are middle-aged men who are mostly interested in fishing, drinking and occasionally her body. Our story starts when a disquieted man (Yoosuk Kim) arrives at her resort, looking to hide from the world.The Isle is a movie of reflection. It's that lazy hour sitting on the porch, drinking coffee, staring at nothing, thinking nothing in particular. And thus, when things start to build up, it takes you a moment to shake off the cobwebs, allowing the movie to deliver some real gut punches. At its heart of hearts it's a thriller, but honestly I have rarely been as nauseated or scared by a horror movie than I was by this one.The Isle is a fantastic movie for someone looking for a quiet thriller that takes its time and trusts itself enough to allow for the suspense to build as slowly as it needs to build. The pacing is just perfect, the story ends just when it needs to and as a whole it's an experience. Highly recommended.
AThames
This was a trippy movie. As with all Ki-duk Kim movies the cinematography was stunning, and the music really added to the movie. This is the second film of his I have seen where the main character doesn't utter a single word. But that doesn't take anything away from the amazing performance Jung Suh put on, as the very mysterious and sometimes scary clerk/prostitute. She genuinely gave me the chills at some points in the movie. I read that a lot of the audience walked out from this movie because of the violence that was on display. It did make me cringe a little, but I felt it was very relevant to the movie. There has also been complains about animal cruelty, specifically hacking a live fish into pieces. It didn't bother me none, it wasn't torture. The movie deals with depression and loneliness, but in a very original way. You as a viewer are made to make a lot of the conclusions yourself, and I like that. It is not a popcorn movie, and like his other films there isn't really a plot. But it is still a very good movie, and it kept me entertained until the end, and left me with a lot to think about. Something I value in a movie.
