[※ Editor’s Note: South Korean film industry has been undergoing rapid growth and changes over the past several decades. The tectonic shift in the industry has fostered a launch of an advanced service analyzing the moviegoers’ decision-making process and making individual and business-level recommendations by deploying big data and artificial intelligence (A.I.).
By operating the game-changing data and recommendation app “Maimovie” powered by Mycelebs, Yonhap News Agency’s K-Culture Planning Team will be releasing a series of content reviews on Korean-made films and drama series. The reviews will primarily be based on the accumulated AI Keytalks, or the viewers’ contextual, meaning, and intentional data on each content. The following series will be uploaded every other week.]
By Lee Se-young
SEOUL, Mar. 29 (Yonhap) -- “Neither your family nor your romantic partner knows you better than your smartphone.”
Netflix’s original Korean-language thriller “Unlocked,” starring Chun Woo-hee and Yim Si-wan, raised up the hype of thriller fans even before its release with this rather provocative promotional line. The movie features what happens when one loses his or her smartphone to a criminal in such a hyper-connected era.
This breathtaking thriller had viewers get the chills with a highly relatable plot setting that can happen in real life to anyone at any time. The film has also gone viral with its eye-catching filming techniques that made viewers feel as anxious as the main protagonist, Na-mi (played by Chun Woo-hee), did after losing her cell phone.
This gripping thriller also gives viewers goosebumps by leading them to the thought that what happened to Na-mi could happen to any one of them at any time.
“Unlocked” graphically and also realistically portrays how letting one’s cell phone go out of one’s sight could disturb an ordinary office worker’s everyday life as if a rock suddenly flies out of the blue into a calm, still water and creates ripples. The movie then gives viewers goosebumps once again by leading them to another thought that the rock may actually have been flying all across them all this time without them noticing.
By the finale of the film, Na-mi reaches the point where she becomes suspicious of everyone around her, even those who have been on her side the entire time, including friends and co-workers. This movie may seem to tell a “personal” story but in reality, it is bringing a far-reaching social problem under the spotlight: It features one of the many social transformations that have been induced by ever-increasing digital connection. The work, in fact, makes viewers look back on whether they themselves have ever been victims or perpetrators in this excessive digital connection that is often going out of hand.
In regards to the AI Keytalks searched via Maimovie, there were a total of 4,214 Keytalks extracted from this crackling thriller.
The most-searched Keytalk was “pernicious,” followed by “whack job,” and “close scrutiny.” In fact, the definition of the adjective “pernicious,” alas “having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way,” has made this list of Keytalks even more reliable. That being said, the Keytalks gathered by the AI-powered Maimovie did impeccably summarize the overall plot and characters of this chilling thriller.
Movie Nation, a representative American film media outlet, gave a commentary on the film, writing, “‘Unlocked’ is … above all sinister parable that will make any viewer think twice and thrice about letting one’s cell phone out of your sight.” It then continues, saying, “It will make ALL of us blush when we recognize the degree to which we’ve folded so much of our lives, our livelihoods, our identity, and our fortunes into these pocket-sized modern marvels.”
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Ha eun Lee)
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