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Reviews
Apparitions (2008)
An interesting experiment on religious perceptions
Father Jacob, played by Martin Shaw, is a British Catholic priest who is next in line to assume the Vatican's positions of chief exorcist. As you may guess, he is very talented at exorcising the demons of the possessed. The demons, fallen angles, are eager to take hold of human bodies, since they are tired of the suffering they must endure in hell. Roughly, this is how the story goes. Although the story line sounds quite ridiculous, I must admit that I was intrigued by the show. As an atheist, it took quite the suspense of disbelief to keep watching, but I found myself questioning interesting notions put forth and challenged throughout the show: Father Jacob lives in a world in which both demons and saints can possess people; a world in which Satan acts but God relies on faith; evils is apparent but good only implied. All in all, the show has decent entertainment value, some very nice acting, and an interesting (albeit a tad ridiculous) storyline. Unfortunately many of Apparitions' plot twists are left hanging in mid air, and many things remain unexplained by the end of the 6th episode. It seems like they may have had a little too much faith in their viewers to make sense of all of it.
Seom (2000)
SPOILER: It is hard to understand disturbed attraction. - I might SPOIL it for you.
Seom is quite unique. Not quite as brute as Audition, to which it is often compared, yet much more subtly menacing. I cannot claim to have fully understood this film, yet it does seem to me that the attraction between the mute care taker and the fugitive is purely violent. The parallelism between her muteness and him swallowing fishers hooks (note that he does not speak thereafter), and his attempted rape of the care taker and her inserting the fishers hooks into her genitals (you do not see them intimately thereafter) seems to resolve all issues between them. They have somewhat become equal, and choose to live in solitude. Having become the same, there is no reason for them to continue their desperation though - they are not alone anymore, finally. That is why (and how I disagree with other comments) it is necessary for them to die in the end (I do assume both have committed suicide).