Unlocked (2023)

Unexplainable thriller, and definitely not a social commentary

I'm going to be honest, I started this movie only because of Siwan, and since the plot seemed interesting, I thought it would be worth watching it beyond the fact that I love to watch Siwan's shows and movies. However, I must say that his performance (and Chun Woohee's) in this movie was the only thing that kept me watching it.

If you want to watch 'Unlocked' looking for a movie that criticizes our society's dependence on smartphones and technology, don't. This is not a social commentary and it doesn't approach the topic like that. This is a movie about a psychopath with no background story or reason to kill, and once again, shallow female relationships that make you wonder if these writers have ever seen women in real life.

I'm going to start with the fact that it bothers me personally that psychological thrillers these days - and by these days I mean in the past several years - are all about male psychopaths with a nonsensical obsession to kill young women. No, I'm not saying that we should give these psychopaths a troubled childhood in order to justify their actions as adults. I'm saying that a story should have a reason to be, whatever it might be. But lately, kdrama writers, and those at Netflix in particular, seem to be making these stories about killing women just for shock value and nothing else. The fact that the reason 'Oh Junyoung' killed these women was just because they dropped their phones is the weakest and most boring reason I've seen in this type of dramas, and that's a lot to say considering that I keep thinking about the drama 'Somebody', which I feel the same way and worse about (if you watched it, you would know what I'm talking about).

Now, another bothersome plot point about this movie is the fact that the killer is always smarter than everyone and can anticipate every move, action, and thought from his victims, making it impossible for them to ever escape their fate. But then again, this wouldn't be so irksome if the writers provided the psychopath with at least a reason to kill or an explanation as to why he's doing what he's doing and why he's so good at it. In this drama, however, we don't even have a name for our killer, which wouldn't be that much of a problem if we at least had any type of information about his background or what he did before the movie started rolling. The only thing that we know is that he impersonated the detective's son and wanted to frame him for his murders. But why? Why did he start impersonating this man? How did they meet? Why was the detective so mad at his son? Why do the writers give us information about the detective's wife and their family situation in general, when it won't even be resolved or explained, or even shown what the link between all this is? The killer wasn't even actually the detective's son, so why do we even need to know this, when we won't know who our killer is or what his reasons are at all? Who did the killer have a grudge against to be going around doing all this, to begin with? There's absolutely no explanation for anything ever and the more I think about this movie, the more questions pop up in my head that will never be answered.

Moving onto the female characters, this is probably what makes me the most upset. The female lead had her phone hacked and discovered it, but the first thing she does is blame her best friend after consulting a man that she met two days ago, and against whom her father warned her. It's kind of annoying how she dismissed the very reasonable concerns of her dad, but I won't even get into that. What I will question, though, is, why do you live in a house without a code? Why does your best friend scare you about having someone breaking into your house? Why do you believe a man you met two days ago over your best friend since middle school? Why does your best friend get immediately upset with you and decide to cut contact with you for a misunderstanding you had in a moment of extreme distress after your life was literally ruined by some psychopath? I don't understand why they made their friendship so shallow and ridiculous that you would decide to cut contact with your friend. Yes, I would also be absolutely hurt if my best friend suspected me of pulling such a horrible thing on her, but to go beyond that and warn her to never contact me again, and leave her all on her own to deal with such a dangerous situation... It pisses me off to think that these writers think women would do that.

Also, after the female lead finds out that her phone was hacked, she simply decides to keep using it as if nothing was happening. Girl, the first thing you needed to do was throw it away. At least she came up with a reverse strategy eventually, but I just kept thinking about why she simply decided to keep using her phone after everything that was happening to her.

These dramas and movies written by men about psychopathic serial killers that outsmart their victims all the time, and in which said victims are the dumbest people you'll ever see really gives me an unsettling feeling considering the incredibly high rates of this type of murder in South Korea.

Overall, this isn't the worst movie you'll ever watch, but it's only a movie to watch if you don't have anything else to do and if you don't feel like watching a complicated story. Don't let the thriller tag deceive you into thinking you're down for an actually good psychological thriller because you are really not.

At least Siwan did amazingly as expected, and Chun Woohee was a very good actress. In general, the cast is pretty good and there are many familiar faces if you watch a lot of kdramas, but other than that, this movie is very weak and not really worth your time.

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