Back home

I Saw the Devil

2853 votes

Producing House

Kyung-chul is a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure. Soo-hyeon, a top-secret agent, decides to track down the murderer himself. He promises himself that he will do everything in his power to take vengeance against the killer, even if it means that he must become a monster himself.

movie

Status: Released

Released Date: 2010-08-12

Runtime: 144 mins

Director: Kim Jee-woon

Spoken language: 한국어/조선말

Genres: Thriller, Horror

Original title: I Saw the Devil

Production Companies: Softbank Ventures, Peppermint & Company, Siz Entertainment, Finecut, Michigan Venture Capital, Showbox, CJ Investment

Production Countries: South Korea

Reviews

L

LastCaress1972
Brutal South Korean film about a serial rapist/killer (Min-sik Choi, Oldboy) who picks on the wrong girl when he kills and chops up the pregnant fiancee of a government secret agent (Byung-hun Lee, A Bittersweet Life, The Good, The Bad, The Weird) who proceeds to track him down, beat him to a pulp, place a tracking device on him, give him some money and release him. The idea being that he wants the killer to suffer and suffer and suffer, again and again, until his fear is as great as that of his victims, before he kills him. I Saw The Devil is not without its faults; at almost two-and-a-half hours, it's too long, the brutal nature of the characters threatens to slide into absurdity especially when our killer takes refuge with a cannibalistic mate who doesn't mind his wife being raped (she doesn't mind, either; I guess your standards slip when your old man eats people for shits & giggles), and the concept of getting this serial rapist/killer to a point of sheer terror, like his victims - is flawed; this guy, as played by Min-sik Choi, is NEVER going to feel any fear. And so it is, by the end, rendering the whole catch/release premise redundant. That said, it's gripping, it's tense throughout much of the runtime, the lead performances are superb, it's astonishingly violent and gory, but it's meted out just right; more Seven than Saw, and it is photographed exquisitely. A serial killer movie bordering on torture porn, set in Korea in the snow, shouldn't logically have a colour palette this vivid, but every frame is just beautiful.
2013-08-11

Recommendations

Psycho
4.2

Psycho

1960-06-22

When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starti

Fight Club
4.2

Fight Club

1999-10-15

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a sho

Absolut
3.9

Absolut

2005-04-20

Two guys against globalization want to plant a virus in the network of a finance corporation. On the

Die Hard
3.9

Die Hard

1988-07-15

NYPD cop John McClane's plan to reconcile with his estranged wife is thrown for a serious loop when,

Next Door
3.2

Next Door

2005-03-11

After Ingrid leaves John, he allows himself to be pulled into a mystical and scary world where it is

Frenzy
3.5

Frenzy

1972-05-25

London is terrorized by a vicious sex killer known as The Necktie Murderer. Following the brutal sla

Jaws
3.8

Jaws

1975-06-20

When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the

Jaws 2
3

Jaws 2

1978-06-16

Police chief Brody must protect the citizens of Amity after a second monstrous shark begins terroriz

Jaws: The Revenge
2

Jaws: The Revenge

1987-07-17

After another deadly shark attack, Ellen Brody decides she has had enough of New England's Amity Isl

Silent Hill
3.3

Silent Hill

2006-04-21

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attemp

Munich
3.6

Munich

2005-12-23

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a

Angel Heart
3.6

Angel Heart

1987-03-06

A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him t

Lost Highway
3.8

Lost Highway

1997-01-15

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, g

The 39 Steps
3.6

The 39 Steps

1935-06-06

Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in

The Silence of the Lambs
4.2

The Silence of the Lambs

1991-02-14

Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to int

Fargo
3.9

Fargo

1996-03-08

Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan

Ocean's Thirteen
3.4

Ocean's Thirteen

2007-06-05

Danny Ocean's team of criminals are back and composing a plan more personal than ever. When ruthless

Swimming Pool
3.3

Swimming Pool

2003-05-21

A British crime novelist travels to her publisher's upmarket summer house in Southern France to seek

Insomnia
3.5

Insomnia

2002-05-24

Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to i

Mystic River
3.9

Mystic River

2003-10-08

The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tr