Last year, I read a book called The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. It’s about a being who keeps jumping into human bodies, resetting a clock each time, to solve a murder mystery. It was a fun read; I totally recommend it.
I think it makes a better book than movie, however. Because in a book, it is obvious that our hero is the same person; on the screen … less. I mean, it’s easy to maintain POV while switching bodies, but damn hard to convince an audience that your –say- Al Pacino type-hero now looks and acts like Lucy Liu.
And with that, I introduce the confusing Korean sci-fi thriller, Spiritwalker, about a being who switches bodies every twelve hours. Is he police guy? Mob guy? Vigilante? Martial artist? Just wait half a day; he will be. The important part is that almost everybody he meets is well armed and looking for blood.
Oh, and the being is an amnesiac … so he doesn’t know who he is even when he’s in the correct body. Amnesia also has a funny way of manipulating motivation, dig? But it mostly really confuses him when he has a different body every twelve hours.
I know what you’re thinking, “COOL!! What a great plot!” … and you’re not wrong. But I hear you add, “Well, great
plot so long as it doesn’t end up being a bunch of fights and one great big gun massacre by the end, right?”
Funny story.
Spiritwalker is cool; there’s a good mystery here and it’s very engaging for a while. It’s fun following the “hero” (for lack of a better word) follow the clues and the bodies both internally and externally. It gets confusing. It gets more confusing when Spiritwalker insists upon being an action thriller and not a psychological drama. I feel like writer/co-director Jae-geun Yoon came up with a fab idea, but instead of merging minds with a writer of science fiction to develop a better plot, he hired a bunch of stuntmen.
Who needs to develop ideas when you can choreograph a bitchin’ brawl?
The premise, and Act I, of Spiritwalker is good enough to recommend the film, but I wouldn’t push it beyond that. It’s tough to root for an ever-changing protagonist, and tougher still when amnesia is substituted for genuine motivation. This is a film I liked much better in theory than in practice.
There once was a hero at play
Who changed bodies two times a day
Ignore the confusing
Or explanation refusing
So long as they end in a fray
Not Rated, 108 Minutes
Director: Jae-geun Yoon, Jae-Keun Yoon (And how do we know you’re not both the same person, huh?)
Writer: Jae-geun Yoon
Genre: Great premises that end in bloodbaths
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The kind of person who wished The Sixth Sense had more gunplay
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The easily addled
