Metamorphosis (Byeonshin): Movie Review

"Metamorphosis" had awesome effects and gruesome gore that will leave you unsettled at its highest moments. But these were few, far, and fleeting. What you get is a horror film without any cohesion and a maddeningly bad narrative to boot.

When one of his exorcisms fails horribly, the extended family of a priest is forced to uproot their lives to avoid further scandal and discrimination from their community. Hoping that a new location will give them peace, this is quickly dashed off when it becomes obvious that whatever evil the priest had tried to stop has decided to latch on to his family instead. This entity, being able to change and mimic itself to other people, confuses the family and forces a game of who is who as each member of the family are unable to determine who is real and who to trust.

"Metamorphosis" , like its antagonist, seemingly tries to mimic other horror films but failed to make itself great in the process. In fact, outside its great practical effects, there's really nothing noteworthy that holds the film together. The biggest issues for "Metamorphosis" were its messy narrative and non-existent scare factor. The story itself had potential but the film instead provided a lot of developmental issues. Let’s just say it countless head-scratching and illogical moments littered throughout its runtime - even for a supernatural film. Some of these were very trivial like how the family was oblivious to screams and shouts of terror inside their own home or the demon having the ability to copy anyone it wanted to but we, the audience, suddenly find out that it actually inhabited a specific person instead - without explaining how it even possessed this character in the first place. Worst of all, the film failed to capitalize on its very interesting characters and we never get a chance to get to know anyone in the family deeply. They had their own issues (personal or familial) that could have brought so much more conflict but the film just skimmed through these revealing them when needed but never giving any background information on each. In the end, we never really cared for any of the characters in the film so much so that when anyone got hurt or even died, we were not affected in any emotional level at all. Additionally, the film lacked the ambience to be a really scary film. The camera work, cinematography, and soundtrack didn’t mix well together and the lack of any tension was actually surprising. Minus its disturbing effects, there’s really nothing scary in “Metamorphosis”.

Rating: 1 reel





Why you should watch it:
- the practical effects were excellent

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- badly written and developed narrative
- it’s not scary at all