“You missed something”

Midnight Quatermass 12: No Bruce Willis and we won an award!

I sign into South Korean Netflix about once a month to see if anything I’ve been wanting to see has dropped. This week I was rewarded with a double bill of THE MAN STANDING NEXT (2020) and 12.12: THE DAY (2023), political historical thrillers dealing with the events of assassination and coup in 1979. Could be pretty dry stuff, but I’m not sure Korean cinema knows how to do dull. The first film starred Lee Byung-hun so I knew I was in safe hands. The second featured a tour de force from Jung Woo-sung and reinforced just how little pleasure I get from modern western film these days.

I try and be positive online these days so I won’t mention the few things I’ve seen that resulted in TVs being hurled from windows. Buy me a drink though and I’ll go into detail.

While these movies were based on, to the target audience, very familiar and recent slices of history I did notice that the non-fictional characters’ names had all been tweaked. I didn’t know that defamation law in South Korea was so strict that the safest route, even for historically accurate movies, was to change all the names. A little like making a British movie about a stone-cold, milk-snatching prime minister, but naming the lead character Marigold Thatcher.

This is, of course, interesting to only me. Sorry. But here’s the trailer for HUNT (2022) to wake you all up. If you’re gonna pick one recent Korean political movie where guys in cool suits shoot the absolute fuck out of each other with M16s then this is the one:

I got my paws on a physical copy of Fetch Book II for the first time this week. It’s always wonderful to hold a thing in your hands that only existed in your head for a while. The entire team did such a beautiful job o bringing it to life. I’m lucky to get to work with them.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from MOON (2009) director Duncan Jones over a drink in LA as we talked about 2000AD and I’ll pass it along here:

“Get yourself a gang.”

Seriously. Great advice.

Sandy spoke about Stormking and said some lovely things about me and Dave here. She may even have let slip something about… well, I shouldn’t say, but it rhymes with Fletch Rook Knee. Got a few things (zombies, werewolves, vigilantes and robots) cued up before that, but it would be nice to visit those guys again.

After all they are now in an award winning comic book!

~

Yep, I’m still struggling with Threads.

I think it just makes me miss pre-Muskfucked Twitter even more.

~

I just started working out what next week looks like. Last week and this both kids have been off school sick and we’ve been ill right along with them. Not fun, although of course we’ve had fun where we could. Got absolutely fuck-all writing done though. I’m at the point now where I find not writing exhausting. So next up is another sprint with Panic which should see me to the half way point. I showed a few pages to Jess last week and she said, ‘This is aimed at kids, right?’. I guess I just enjoy breaking their little hearts.

I do feel much better tonight though and this dumb newsletter is a good way to get back in the saddle. Story time?

~

Did It Work?

The room is an empty box.

Night has fallen but the city is neon so enough ambient light comes through the large floor to ceiling windows that dominate it. Two things grab our attention; a toppled lamp and the corpse.

Whoever this was they haven’t been dead long. The blood is still dripping, fresh.

He’s sat upright against the opposite wall, head down to reveal part of it is missing. Blood everywhere. Little chunks of brain matter here and there.

There’s writing on the wall behind him that moves down onto the floor where he sits, but its mostly obscured with splatter.

A door is closed to his left, but the door opposite is open and now a young woman appears there, leaning her head against the doorway. She’s also bloody, but none of it is hers. She just didn’t react fast enough.

Near her head is a Sandra Bullock wall calendar turned to September 16 2002. Today. A Monday. Sandra’s smile is stained red.

She watches a large drop of blood form on the man’s chin and waits for it drop down on to his chest.

On the floor between them is a broken wooden chair, discarded rope and a flask.

She’s watching the body because, distasteful as it is, it’s better than looking at the large, bible-black, leather-bound hardback book that lays closed on the floor near the body’s feet. It seems to be the only thing in the room not covered in gore.

She may have stayed in that near fugue stage a while longer if the phone in her pocket hadn’t started buzzing. She pulls it out and flips it open. A familiar voice fills her ear.

‘Did it work?’

She looks at the phone in her hand incredulously. Then gets angry.

‘His fucking head exploded.’

‘Did it work?’

‘He’s fucking dead, Charles. I’m stood here wearing what’s left of him.’

‘What did you do?’

She closes her eyes.

‘I did what you fucking told me to. Look, you need to come here. Now.’

‘I’m on my way. But you need to talk me through what happened, Ash. Tell me what you did. Exactly. Step by step.’

Exasperated, she walks to the window.

‘I did. What you. Told me to. And his head. Ex. Ploded. Fuck. You.’

She looks at her neon coloured refection with a sigh.

‘What did I tell you to do? Step by step. Please.’

‘You told me to get him to drink from the flask you gave me.’

She thinks back to earlier that evening. Less than an hour ago. The man bound to the chair, eyes grateful as she held the flask to his mouth. He drank greedily.

‘You told me to leave the room for half an hour. I read a few pages of Bleak House. It’s hard going.’

She thinks back to sitting on the toilet seat trying to make the words make sense, but she was tired, distracted. Scared. She looked at her wristwatch more than the novel.

‘You told me to come back and make sure he was out.’

She remembers approaching the captive, now slumped in his seat. Asleep or pretending she couldn’t tell. She taps his shin with her foot. Nothing. She kicks the chair over and he crashes to the floor, knocking the lamp over. Still nothing.

‘You told me to copy the circle out of that damned book exactly. You reminded me twice to ensure it covered both the floor and wall.’

She’d used a black sharpie. Brought three just inn case. She started with the rough semi-circle on the floor where he was lying then sat him up so he was leaning against the wall where she completed the circle.

Then she began to add the symbols around its edge just like the design in the open pages of the book. Some were simple. Others were not.

‘You told me to untie him.’

She had reached around and behind him, almost like a lover struggling to undo a clasp, until the rope fell away.

‘And that’s when he woke up. You didn’t tell me he’d wake up, Charles.’

The man’s head had lifted and his eyes opened as she fell backwards scrambling away from him. He did nothing but smile. That was enough.

‘This won’t work,’ he said.

‘He spoke to me…’

She looks down at the phone in her hand. Angry again.

‘You told me he wouldn’t speak to me, you motherfucker!’

‘What then?’

She looks at the book again now.

‘I read the passage from the book. Exactly as you told me to.’

The man had chuckled as she read the first incantation.

‘Exactly?’

‘Of course…’ but the moment she says it she’s suddenly not so sure of herself. ‘Yes.’ She pauses. ‘I think so.’

‘You think so?’

She’s not going to cry.

‘He wouldn’t shut up.’

She thinks back to his moving lips, suddenly cracked and parched.

‘It was my mother’s voice.’

Her eyes went wide at the sound, but she was sure that she’d carried on reciting the verse. 99% certain.

‘I tried to hold on. In the hospital. But it was so hard. And it hurt so much to stay. You told me you’d come, but you never did. Where were you, Ashley? It hurt to stay, but it hurt more to leave without you. I didn’t want to die alone. You promised--’

She angrily wipes her eyes and then leans her head on the cool window.

‘You told me it wouldn’t speak to me, but it did and it was my dead mother’s voice, you bastard and--‘

Charles’ voice cuts through the red cloud.

‘You missed something.’

And she remembers. Her finger was following the passage in the book as she read loudly to try and drown his voice (her voice) out, but she was crying. She paused to wipe her eyes as she just had, but when her finger returned to the book it skipped a word.

A single small word.

And his head had exploded.

‘Fuck. I did my best. I tried to save him. You weren’t here. We killed him.’

‘No. You killed him.’

She closes her eyes.

‘Come here and say that to my face you son-of-a-bitch.’

‘I’m almost there. You need to check for a pulse.’

She laughs as she turns to look at the corpse.

‘Charles, the entire front of his head is missing. I’m looking at what’s left of his brain. Trust me. He’s dead. There’s no pulse.’

‘Check it anyway. Humour me.’

She rolls her eyes.

‘For fuck’s sake!’

She moves towards the corpse. She leans in. Phone cradled to her ear.

‘What else did I tell you to do? With your phone?’

She’s preoccupied with checking for the pulse, first at the wrist then at the neck, not concentrating on the question.

‘Not to call you with it. You’d call me. Look, there’s no fucking pulse. Where are you, Charles?’

‘What else did I tell you to do with the phone, Ashley?’

Ash is still focussed on the corpse, grimacing at the cavity in the head. She hasn’t picked up the use of her full name.

‘You told me to take the battery out...’

She remembers doing just that. And dropping it into her other jacket pocket.

‘... and to put it back when I was done.’

The penny drops.

She falls backwards clawing at her jacket pocket and pulls out the battery. She looks at in her hand. Then moves her wide eyes to the impossibly-lit phone in the other.

‘Oh fuck… Charles…’

‘I’m here, Ashley…’

The voice is coming from the moving lips of the corpse.

‘…but I’m not Charles.’

The dead man’s head comes up suddenly. No longer bound he grabs at Ash and pulls her fully into the circle with him. A lover’s embrace.

She screams.

~

Ash is getting changed in the bathroom. A wash basket contains her bloody shirt. She pulls on a clean one. Satisfied with her reflection she picks up both the phone and the battery from the shelf above the sink and pushes them back together. The phone rings immediately. She lifts it to her ear as she picks up the copy of Bleak House and looks at it inquisitively.

Charle’s voice.

‘Did it work?’

It smiles at its new reflection and finds her voice.

I’ll leave you with the answer to a question I was recently asked:

‘What was the movie that got you hooked on Korean cinema?’

See you next Wednesday…