Name: Influenza
Genre: Short
Duration: 30 min
Rating: 6.6
Cast: Yun Je-mun, Go Su-hee

Classifying Influenza as a horror film, now that I ponder on it, makes the most sense. It's not about necessarily any character build up because Bong Joon-Ho knows there isn't time for that in his manifestation of the randomness and bizarre state of how murder and crimes happen in the world.

There is no explanation sometimes for why someone will just go berserk and just start pummeling another person on the street, though here there is the fact that the man who we see on this downward trajectory us joined by a woman who is equally cuckoo for cocoa-puffs early on, and his film is just a series of horrific acts that is impactful not because of the visceral nature but because Bong never forgets the cinematic form.

Notice how much he wants, as De Palma does when he is getting his voyeuristic side on, to make us see perspectives and spaces and how we have to understand the full geography of a space to get how awful these acts become. There's those split screen images of the man being taken off of the subway, and we don't know at first what is going to happen but our eyes are watching for any sudden move... and then there is LOTS of it.

The longer this goes on it is only one CCTV angle, and now that Bong has in his way trained the audience to know what to look for one recoils especially because of how long he let's some moments play (the guy who gets knocked with the bat in the garage and then gets up and fights back and how that unfolds is the prime example).

But Bong being Bong, there is play in how the tone shifts as well; you know this is an artist who can't help but shift into absurdity as the one guy finds himself in the bank - about to rob it, about to attack, we are waiting in suspense - and it turns out that the bank has a surprise for this man as he is the 20th customer of the day on the bank's 20th anniversary and there is a big celebration (ironically it seems just like the kind of moment Candid Camera made it's bread and butter generations ago). How the guy reacts to that is hilarious - I mean, how else would you react to that?

But then right after this is the punishing climax of the short, which ends in an agonizing act because of just how much Bong is playing around still: how much do the people outside know what's happening is real or staged? Does anyone know? When will someone pop in and say "ah, just kidding, we are filming a short on the security camera." So many of these scenarios play out in very public spaces, and the daring is making us question what we might do if we were seeing such chaos break out.

Or... I mean, a truly macabre work that is only marred by a little confusion early on by something we are meant to see that isnt clear. I'd love to see this in a movie theater one day; watching it via streamed casting from Criterion Channel is one thing, but with excellent picture and Dolby sound? What a filmmaker.

Korean cinema is known for its mastery of genre, fluidly blending thriller, drama, and dark comedy with social critique. The post-1990s renaissance brought bold storytelling and masterful craft to the world stage, addressing class, identity, and modern anxieties with cinematic flair.

The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

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Influenza

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