Director and co-writer Kim Byung-woo turns up the visual spectacle and gets playful with the mythology in this big screen adaptation of the popular South Korean web comic Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. The result is a blend of the aesthetics of Squid Game and Train to Busan with the jeopardy of an action fantasy console game.
As his temporary office job ends, loner Kim Dok-ja looks for solace and distraction in his favourite web serial Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. But when he writes to the author to complain about the book’s bleak ending, the reply invites him to write a different one. Dok-ja is then plunged into a fight for his life, as the imaginary world of the book takes over the real one. He’s confronted by all-powerful monsters and fiendishly difficult survival challenges. As he tries to lead a small group of like-minded survivors to safety, can Dok-ja escape the book’s fateful ending?
While the storyline will remain incomprehensible to viewers unfamiliar with the source material, it’s a bold, brash, and fast-moving affair, serving up a mix of imaginative and more routine digital visuals. The script offers tentative critiques of Korean corporate culture, but selfishness and idiocy are not depicted as the sole preserve of the boss class. Many of the set-pieces are impressive, possessing an immersive sense of scale, but characterisation inevitably relies on ciphers and stereotypes. With a cast drawn from the ranks of K-pop alumni (that’s a thing now), there’s no doubting the intended demographic for what the makers clearly intend to be a new film franchise. If that doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of the world.
OMNISCIENT READER: THE PROPHECY is available to stream on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube Movies.
