The Mimic
장산범

  • Cast

    Yum Jung-ah, Park Hyuk-kwon

  • Release Date

    2017

  • Runtime

    100 mins

  • Cert

    15

After opening 2013’s London Korean Film Festival with his feature debut Hide and Seek, writer/director Huh Jung is back with K-horror The Mimic. Hee-yeon (Yum Jung-ah) moves to the foot of Mount Jang, Busan with her husband, daughter and demented mother-in-law, but is still haunted by the disappearance of her son five years earlier. When a mysterious girl appears, Hee-yeon is drawn to a local legend of a monstrous tiger (the film’s Korean title, 장산범, means ‘Mount Jang tiger’) that lures people into its cave by imitating the voices of their loved ones. Taking his cues equally from the popular Korean folktale ‘The Sun and the Moon’, and Hideo Nakata’s J-horror Dark Water (2002), Huh’s chiller is a melancholic study of maternity and loss, while using echoes, mirrors and recurring scenes to reveal cinema itself as the medium of mimicry.