‘Revelations’ Review
If Yeon Sang-ho has made anything clear with his past works, it’s that people will do anything if they believe enough that it is a righteous action. That conviction paints every action taken within Yeon’s latest film, Revelations, but has also made people behave differently from Train to Busan to Hellbound to The Bequeathed. Where those films and series have often circled individuals being forced to act differently due to circumstances or the world changing, Yeon’s latest is a far more focused character study that touches on familiar motivations in his past work while also depicting the gradual degradation of humanity in the face of evil. A messy narrative that works best when settled on a single character, Revelations too often drags its feet trying to perfectly position its religious musings with moral convictions until the audience fully comprehends how a man of God can justify violence in his name.
Killing in the name of a religious figure is old hat at this point, but Yeon’s film is clever in how it gets the ball rolling. Pastor Sung Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) is confronted with a moral dilemma when his wife calls to explain that their son has gone missing. Moments before, Kwon Yang-rae (Shin Min-jae) wanders into Min-chan’s church service after recently being released from prison for the murder of Detective Lee Yeon-hui’s (Shin Hyun-been) sister, who is now hellbent on bringing Yang-rae to justice. Yang-rae has taken an interest in a young girl who takes refuge in the church service and then disappears while Min-chan accosts him. Quickly suspecting Yang-rae of abducting his son, Min-chan follows him to a secluded mountainous area under darkness and heavy rainfall, where he accidentally kills the former convict through a tumble down a slippery slope.
Despite the set-up itself being convoluted already, Yeon and co-writer Choi Kyu-seok (who also co-wrote Hellbound with Yeon) continue to tangle up the narrative as much as possible by following two separate storylines revolving around Yang-rae and expanding upon them as much as possible. Unfortunately, neither is given equal care and attention to character detail. While Min-chan’s convictions of moral righteousness spiral into delusion and obsession with Yang-rae, Yeon-hui’s characterizations are almost entirely relegated to flashbacks as her present self is hollowed out by the trauma of losing her sister in such a violent way. It’s an underwhelming, familiar narrative that situates later events in fascinating moral quandaries, but getting to that point’s a slight chore.
It’s in Min-chan’s arc that Yeon and Choi wrestle far more openly with the religious elements of the screenplay. A new megachurch being built near his current ramshackle operation positions Min-chan as potentially being able to upgrade his position within the church. It’s in the violent confrontation between Yang-rae and Min-chan that a series of events is set in motion that delude the pastor into believing he may be chosen by God. Signs appear in his everyday life, and the delusion quickly overcomes him. There’s a subplot involving his wife having an affair that leads to a particularly effective intersection of power and religion, but also accentuates the fact that Revelations is far too complicated in its plotting.
The convoluted screenplay is ultimately where Yeon’s film suffers most. While the melodramatic moments are part and parcel for Korean cinema, the intricate narrative with one character against the unbelievably sparse threads with Yeon-hui ends up working against both sides of the equation. Yeon’s fascination with moral dilemmas seeping into violent actions comes to a head in the film’s climax. Still, as thrilling as the final act becomes, the interest is not in the character we sympathize with but the one we’ve witnessed fall from grace. While that would typically make for some compelling cinema, Revelations leaves most of the emotion at the door in exchange for a blunt exploration of religious fanaticism against immoral violence.
