Revelations review
Intersecting beliefs elevate Revelations beyond the standard crime investigation.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Revelations
Directed by Yeon Sang-ho
Written by Kyu-Seok Choi and Yeon Sang-ho
Starring Ryu Jun-yeol, Shin Hyeon-bin, Shin Min-jae, Han Ji-hyun, Kim Bo-min, Kim Do-young and Moon Joo-yeun
Revelations Review
If you aren’t familiar with the name Yeon Sang-ho…you almost certainly know his most famous work. He’s the director of 2016’s Train to Busan…one of the best horror movies of the 21st century. Busan was, itself, a revelation. Arguably the best “fast zombie” movie ever made…it stood out at a time when the genre was overloaded with zombie stories. Train to Busan is a special film. Full of characters as interesting as they are disposable. A breathless thrill ride that packs an emotional punch. Sang-ho’s Busan sequel Peninsula came and went with little impact a few years later. Other non-genre, or at least…other-genre, films fared about the same. Now, Netflix brings us Yeon Sang-ho’s latest work…Revelations.
Revelations is an adaptation of Sang-ho’s own webtoon. It’s co-written by the webtoon’s co-creator Choi Gyu-seok. I’m not entirely sure what a webtoon is. From what I can gather, it’s a type of comic strip meant to be scrolled through on a phone. Adapting from such a format would explain the timing that Revelations chooses to deliver its biggest…revelations. A massive turn comes right around the time you’d think the first issue of a comic would end. It also turns the entirety of what you expected Revelations to be about upside down.
The brief plot summary for Revelations provided by IMDB is doing some heavy lifting on the story’s deception. “A pastor and a detective, driven by their beliefs, pursue a missing person case, with the pastor seeking retribution after a divine revelation identifies the culprit who abducted his son.” The first part is true. The second part leans into a misdirection that Revelations will unveil at the end of its first act. Put simply…Revelations isn’t the movie that you think it is.
It does involve the intersecting paths of a pastor and a detective. Each has a somewhat supernatural connection to the case at hand. The pastor believes he is receiving messages from God. The detective is strangely intuitive…and haunted by past trauma. The story begins with a local criminal following a young girl into the pastor’s church. The pastor reaches out to the man in hopes of recruiting him into the parish. Soon after, the pastor’s son disappears.
The pastor is having all kinds of troubles. He learns that his wife is cheating on him…he covets a new position at a better church but feels he will be passed over for it…and now his distractions led to his son’s disappearance. He suspects the criminal and stakes out his home…finding him with a shovel in apparent preparation for burial. After following the man…there is a confrontation. While standing over the criminal’s body…the pastor learns that a friend of the family picked up his son and all is well.
There is, however, another missing person. The girl the criminal followed has actually been abducted by the man. Now he’s in no position to tell anyone where he has hidden her. Enter the detective side of the story. Without the swerve involving the pastor’s story…Revelations would be a fairly straightforward crime drama. Albeit a good-looking one featuring some wonderful performances. The intersecting plots of an investigation and what follows the pastor’s error make Revelations into something more.
A lot of what makes Revelations work involves twists and turns that occur after the big one. We won’t be spoiling them here…but it needs to be stated again that Revelations isn’t the movie you think it is. Well…half of it, anyway. The crime investigation follows familiar beats. Until they’re thrown off course by the pastor’s new path. Revelations is a consistently interesting movie. Ryu Jun-yeol is terrific as the pastor whose increasingly distressing life is suddenly turned on its head. His story is more interesting than the detective’s race against time…but the two stories need each other to apply pressure on one another.
Revelations is not Train to Busan. The latter feels destined to be a defining film of its era. Revelations is, however, a quality watch available on Netflix right now. The pastor’s story is more interesting than the plot summaries would lead you to believe. It casts a shadow over every other piece of the story…while forcing them to react and adapt to its ever-changing path. The result is more than that plot summary would lead you to believe.
Scare Value
While not a horror movie perse…Revelations is a dark, surprisingly twisted tale of well and misplaced faith. It utilizes religion in a fashion far bleaker and more interesting than most. While its investigation doesn’t break new ground, the narrative strokes pushing against it force it into more entertaining territory. A top-notch lead performance and quality production keep things flowing in the right direction despite some slower than necessary periods.
3.5/5
Revelations Link
Streaming on Netflix
