The Mayhem (2023)

When Things Go Wrong at Every Turn

The story is really simple. Hwang Sukmi reigns in the women prison with her bulky built and fighting skills, but a rich girl who had just got incarcerated there decides to take over the helm by bribing the whole prison officers up to the warden and prosecutors using her dad’s money and influence. The rich girl had her goons plant poppy in the prison garden and plans to ship them off to China when the gender equality program ends. Hwang Sukmi then decides to investigate and foil her plan.

All I can say is the writer and director totally wasted Jung Youngju’s talent with this piece of crap. I mean I have seen her in lots of kdramas and she always catches my eye even as supporting character. Clicking this to expect another phenomenal performance led me to utmost disappointment instead. It’s not about the actors really, yeah well, some of them are really bad, but the writing, directing, editing and the technical dept did most of the work of beating this movie into a soggy blob of mess.

The finale where Hwang Sukmi and another inmate was fighting off rich girl and the bribed prison director was ridiculously done with other prison guards and some top brass from dept of justice just standing around watching. The sound effects, especially of the gunshot, and the makeup of the fight injuries were so comical it felt like I was watching 80-90’s HK movie. The fight choreograph is one of the worst I’ve seen so far, they looked too rehearsed, awkward and stiff. Like seriously. Everything about this movie felt so wrong at every turn, leaving me in a total “what-did-i-just-watch” moment in the end.

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