FrothyMix

haha Commenters like you always "almost" turn it off, but somehow manage to watch the whole thing anyway. lol In what way was this film "graphic?" It was clear what was going on but there was nothing explicit shown. ???

So...why didn't you folks like, you know, STOP WATCHING during the first rape, and drop it?

"accused of"

Yeah, actors are about 7-8 years too old for high schoolers. The MC is a good actor and plays the reluctant fighter well, but there were way too many dorky things going on, like students walking down school hallways swinging baseball bats and wood planks and no teachers or administrators say "hmmm...we might have a situation here. " No students ever get suspended or expelled, despite repeated violent clashes. Despite repeated violent clashes with baseball bats, no one loses a tooth, gets a severe concussion, loses an eye, it's all good. Best student in the class gets put in the hospital by bullies, teacher just says "X was hit by kids yesterday, go see him in hospital," lol No biggie.

Though the cliche of tough guys and their bitches smoking cigs all the time to show that they're rebellious and street-savvy was over-played as usual, at least everyone smoked like they knew what they were doing and had been doing it a long time. Often, you can tell the actors have never touched a cig in their life until that scene was shot. lol

Won't be watching "Bullies 2," lol.

WHY OH WHY do so many of the plot synopses here at MDL give away almost every damn important detail about the plot?! It's very frustrating. For instance, this one should have stopped or become much more vague after "At the same time, his instincts increasingly oppressed his thoughts and behaviors." But instead we're told every major plot point til the end of the movie. Seriously?

Whoa. That's some fucked-up shit, in both directions, which is I suppose the point.
If I had to choose, I'd definitely choose the South without hesitation as the North is a backward hermit kingdom and I like the Internet and all the good shit we have in the West far too much to give it up. '
BUT South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the developed world, a psycho-conservative social/cultural environment second to none for hypocrisy and judgementatlism and greed and, I think, just plain nastiness. There's a reason why in Korean movies people are always screaming at each other.

Lee Won Keun is always an appealing presence, but wasted here.

So sad and horrible.

Thought the movie could have been a lot better, though. The direction during the entire interogation sequence in the south seemed off, and a lot of choices and directions among the officers there were out of wack, along who could and could not walk in and out of that little room; sometimes it was locked and sometimes not. And how'd the dude recover from the tongue-biting so quickly?

I get that the entire experience would be horrific and disorienting but I'm surprised the MC made the final decision he chose.

Well, if you're not nut, you're a jerk then. Hey, guess what? I skim the synopses of most movies and stop reading if it seems about to give more away than I want to know. Because I don't know who writes them, but some of the synopses here are WAY too revealing, giving away everything from start to finish. And guess what else, Amastris? I DON'T READ tags if I think they might give away too much, which they often do here. Why do you think movie posters and most movie reviews don't include a list of "tags?" Because who wants to go into a movie knowing exactly what they are going to see? Likewise, I read comments for tthe most part AFTER I watch a movie, when it is interesting to see how others reacted to the same material.

It's so bizarre that you put this energy into posting a long spoiler and then a defense of it and now another defense of your arrogance, and you still haven't even watched the freaking movie. You have NO idea what you're writing about. Movies MOST often don't follow the exact trajectory of a true story on which they may be based. You may well be handing out misleading information as well as spoilers and you don't care enough to find out because you're so eager to let us all know how OUTRAGED and self-righteous you are.

No, you're not nuts. You're an SJW weirdo run rampant.

My god, what a nightmare. Political correctness and Social Justice Warriors run amok. This is the way we're headed in the U.S. too. Evidence, lack of evidence, no evidence? Evidence be damned, lock him up because it's the current trend in all the news and social affairs talk shows! This is the danger of the crazy-ass "me too" "movement" in the U.S. where accusations are made decades after the fact and yet the accused is immediately assumed to be guilty, never mind that little "innocent until proven guilty" thing they teach us in grade school and high school. It's a lie. Accused people everywhere are treated by the system as if they are guilty from the moment of arrest. It's appalling.

Good acting all round, it got too long and too re-enactment like in trying to make all its points but it was a good watch. This kind of thing just infuriates me. Ninety-nine percent conviction rate. Holy god, that is insane. I hope Japan gets it shit together in that regard soon. Jesus.

I'm sorry...I have no idea. I just googled it and couldn't find it again.

I agree, but how in the world could this become a big, public case all in the news and shit, and yet the school continues to operate without mandatory treatment for prior and currenct victims? And there would at the very least be an adult supervisor othe than the driver on each bus. I hope that last scene was to make a point, and not the way things were actually left, because that would be crazy.

Listen, I get that you're feeling all self-righteous and shit, but your comment is def a spoiler. How in the world would MOST people come to this movie knowing it was based on a true event, or even what it was about at all? There is no requirement that an audience member do prior research about every movie they see. To imply such a thing is ridiculous. I feel the more of a blank slate I am coming into a film the more I can perceive it for what it is on its own merits.

And your transparent excuses for not hiding your spoilers are bullshit. You're basically saying "hey, this was based on a true story and HERE IS WHAT THE TRUE STORY IS ALL ABOUT, but that has nothing to do with the movie!" Are you nuts?

I think I'll let this flick sink in for a couple of days before commenting further, but I wanted to say immediately that I am SO impressed at its willingness to take on the very common issue of victims of sexual abuse developing feelings of affection for their abusers, which then becomes ANOTHER layer of guilt and self-hatred for them to deal with. I know almost nothing about the psychological reasons for these feelings but it makes a rough sort of sense if you consider that any form of sex involves physical closeness and intimacy and attention, which many abusees aren't getting elsewhere. Anyway, I was deeply moved by the psychological plight of the main abuser and how he came to be what he was, and how much he hated himself for loving his abuser.

That said, I don't get WHY what was going on on the bus and elsewhere was not, from the very start, a CRIMINAL, juvenile court matter...the girl was being raped, reguarly. I mean, maybe there are all kinds of reasons, but I don't feel like they were dealt with in the film. Hopefully, the main bully's back-story would come out in criminal proceedings.

Also: How was there four years of surveillance tape if they just put up the camera toward the end? And how did those kids get hold of a digital form of the recording on their phones?

Good adting from the MC, the girl and the bully, especially at the end when his story emerged. His performance in that roof-top scene was heart-rending.

Sad and upsetting but true and real. The MC is remarkable. 9/10

Since no one else is here, Geegee, I'm not going to worry about spoiler tags. Do you think the girl was ever a real, actual person? Toward the end I started feeling like she was a complete fantasy of his. Or that she was real when he saw her in the book store, but that everything else from the time he began speaking to her, was a fantasy that kept him going. We were never given ANY background or exposition on who she was or what her circumstances were.

What I DO know is that the young lead actor is a tremendously talented kid...not so much a kid by now, but what a painfully realistic portrayal of a person is desperate circumstances and the barbaric juxtaposition of rich/poor all over the world. Was there ever an image as cute/pathetic as the MC washing and hanging out those stuffed animals on the roof of that building? God, he tried so hard.

Didn't get why he got so unkept and dirty again at the end. He had found access to water up there; they showed him bathing. Maybe so depressed he gave up keeping clean? That bitch who stood right under her "help wanted" sign and so nastily said they weren't hiring needs a good punch in the face. Why didn't she let him clean up in her place and give him some clean clothes? He would have worked his butt off. But I suppose she was also barely getting by and everyone is quick to look down on whoever is a little bit below them...even the poor.

I think I need to take a break from tragic movies for a few days.

So dirty...and so cute. :)

This was my second watch, I realized shortly after the film began, and I remember it being powerful so I kept watching. Also, I always get a mountain of new info out of a film on second watch. That was true this time too.

Bleak is right, but accurate and real. The gap begin rich and poor in the U.S. is the biggest its every been and no one seems to give a shit. Obviously the same is true all over the world.

I was glad he did what he did at the end, I just wish he'd have kept at it a few more times.

Hey Geegee. Beautiful explanation. I thought the same as far as the goat metaphor being the girl from the moment I saw it in that pit. Actually, it got to where I thought maybe it was TOO obvious a metaphor, but it worked. I loved when she tramped mud into the church. I was raised church-ish myself, and wish I'd thought to do that when I was a teenager.

I refuse to find it too late at the end though. I wish you hadn't mentioned a possible suicide, as I hadn't thought of that. But now thinking back, she somehow lost track of the goat that night on the street, then stood there thinking, then ran into the blackness, which certainly could have been a suicide metaphor.

I liked this movie a lot, but can be cranky about overly obvious or clunky metaphors. Like when he lost the goat at the end. I mean, the falling down looked fake and it took him forever but not that long to look up and the goat is gone. Well, yeah, the goat went down into that ditch! Get up and go get it! lol

I didn't see your comment when I commented here earlier this evening but should have known you'd be on this thread. It's our kind of movie!

Please don't take this in as any kind of judgement on the character, it's more a comment on the direction...it seemed odd to me that when the old drunken son of a bitch was getting up off the girl when the boy saw them, that she wasn't more dissheveled and he wasn't covered in scratches or something...I expected her to fight back like a banshee and it seems she just kind of went limp. Honestly, even if she hadn't fought back, her skirt would have been up and it just didn't look as though it was realistically staged...but that it was staged that way so that the boy could easily come to the conclusion that he did when he saw them. Do you think she had just sort of given up on everything at that point so hadn't the heart to fight back? But that's not right because before he raped her she and the boy were still on good terms and she had reason to be hopeful. It wasn't til she saw him running away at the top of the hill that she would have given up.

Can you imagine raping some young girl and then sitting in a fucking church service, smirking at her afterwards? There really are people like that.

I'm there for it, Geegee!

He's a good actor. And who knows what happened after the snowfall?

Oh you poor baby..."verbally bullying..." lol If you are twice my age then you must be a vampire or a werewolf or witch or something. I don't know...maybe you are. So if you have any time before sucking other peoples' blood or flying around on your broom, could you take a bit of it to explain what being an old hag has to do with thinking you are a paragon of virtuous, righteous behavior, even in situations which you could not possibly have experienced, such as what the young man in the movie went through? Thanks...I'll wait. On the other hand...wait: If you are that old maybe you've simply FORGOTTEN what it's like to be a young human person with weaknesses and frailties trying to figure out how to live in a fucked up world.

Another question: How does anything I wrote above constitute "bullying?" That is another SJW cliche word that now gets thrown around so often it's losing its meaning.

I wish we'd gotten a more hopeful ending, but it could have been worse too. Who knows what happened after the snowfall?

The main culprits here, as so often, are the parents, especially that horrible pastor. He is no more a Christian than any of those in his flock. I grew up going to church and always noticed how UN-christian were the actions and behaviors of many adults. Going to church was just another social event at which to chat and gossip and people were forever passing judgement on others. My mother attended the same church for 92 years, from her birth to her death. When she went into a nursing home and became extremely frail, exactly TWO fucking people from that church, other than the pastor, came to see her over the course of four years. Church people are disgusting.