Hwayi: A Monster Boy - Movie

It’s been a long time since I watched a gripping psychological drama that had me on the edge of my seat as it forced my brain into following every detail of the story as it played out, but my does it feel good to get lost every now and then in one. Hwayi: A Monster Boy had me lapping up its story line with some eager eyes and it gave me something to enjoy. The relatively gruesome thriller could probably stand as one of the most bloody and uncensored Korean-based pieces of media I have set my eyeballs upon [to date] and I loved every minute of it.

The story is a dark toned one that has you follow a young boy raised by a group of criminals who aren’t the type to think twice before pulling the trigger. But despite being raised and trained by his fairly ruthless fathers, our teenage boy retains a rather innocent temperament as well as an artistic view of the world. We see him roaming the streets in a uniform as he longs for a normal life and especially the relationships that come with it.

But things don’t stay easy going for our boy as a job that his fathers have taken brings out the boy’s past and hidden secrets are revealed and mistakes are made as the boy is confronted by a rather cruel reality that has been hidden from him all his life. Things escalate from there, not only as the truth is revealed but as the boy is forced to follow in his adoptive fathers’ footsteps, an act that brings about the first crack in his already troubled psyche as things go south and quickly.

The show is well planned out and the pacing of how the events unfold is genius as you follow the story of the poor boy whose life is torn about in the most twisted of ways. The action is also pretty good and gruesome in all the right places. The acting was also on point as it breathed some amazing life into the scenes and brought the whole thing to life, so I have to give props to the actors, especially our lead guy as he brought home the troubled teen act.

One thing I also liked about the movie was its realistic expectation, in the sense of what you expected would happen to the actors. There were no ‘in the nick of time’ saves, or perfect shots all the time. Bullets missed and time was not messed with throughout the movie, especially there at the end. The drama was kept to a minimum which was pretty cool in my books.

All in all, a good psychological and suspense movie with some sweet action spots to wet the taste buds with.