EXIT Movie Review

The idea for choosing the disaster appeared here is pure genius.

EXIT is another surprise from Korean film industry which is luckily able to be watched at cinemas in Indonesia. After Parasite, EXIT became my 2nd favourite movie that I watched this year immediately. Not only appears Im Yoon-a and Jo Jong-suk, this movie also brings pure genius premise about the big disaster that may happened in a metropolis. No wonder this movie has reached over 8 million admissions in Korea.

“Earthquakes, tsunami, those aren’t the only types of disaster. Our current situation itself is a disaster.” That quote taken from its trailer really represents the live of Yong-Nam (Jo Jong-suk) after graduation. He is a jobless and unmarried man who spends the days just with eating, sleeping, and going to the toilet – as he said proudly to his relatives. Thus, he still stays with his stubborn and talkative parents and being financed by his older sister. He is lazy man who is good at rock climbing, the only thing he proud with. He insisted to hold a party for his mother’s 70th birthday in a distant ballroom, where his crush, Eui-Ju (Im Yoon-a) works there. In the party, the other family members found him as the least successful one and underestimated him, pressing another wave on his disastrous life. Suddenly a terrorist spread toxic gas from the center of the town, killed everyone who inhaled in it, turned the busy town into the chaotic one. The partying family, Eui-Ju, and the building manager had to go to the top of the building before the smog raise and cover up the high building. When the real disaster come, Yong-Nam do the risky action to jump over the building, jump again to the higher altitude, to unlock the rooftop for everyone.

The spread of toxic gas is somehow a mind blowing premise to start this disaster-escape actions. And the director itself successfully developed the premise into a thrilling story, despite didn’t tell about natural disaster or zombie apocalypse for instance. Throughout the movie, the scenes also made me felt the tense as if I watch slasher movies, although this movie has no bleeding scene. I could feel a goosebumps every time Yong-Nam would climb or jump over the higher building. Here, Eui-Ju is told as the girl who loves rock climbing too, which is the first person to support Yong-Nam’s action. Later we would also see her do the similar action to survive from the gas while she and Yong-Nam remained after the rescuing helicopter was overloaded by Yong-Nam’s family and the manager. Since the second half of the movie, both of them performed the escaping action in the hard way. Since that point too, the audiences started to put faith on them, wishing them survive the spreading gas. Our protagonists also had to run as fast as they can since they only had limited masker and oxygen containers to be used by the two. They also utilized any items near them to help them moving through buildings smartly. At that time, we were like watching Yong-Nam and Eui-Ju as they were running through the mazes in Ninja Warrior. However the raising toxic gas was watching for them if they fell instead of soft mattress.

Even though EXIT delivers thrilling actions, main story in it still brought with comical tone. From the start, we’ve been shown how Yong-Nam live his jobless life with his family in clumsy way. We would also see how Yoona as Eui-Ju acted hilariously during her panic several times. There, both Yong-Nam and Eui-Ju seemed share same silliness. It makes us still can laugh at them during the “running” scenes. But the most remembered funny scene is when the two and the other family did the “SOS mob” eagerly to attract the rescuing helicopter. In addition, this movie also illustrated the life of local citizens at the night and how some of them react to the strange phenomenon around them (e.g. take a selfie in front of the toxic gas, really? would you do that?).

The movie also features Yoona’s bravery and silliness in a same scene. The thing can’t be missed by her fans.

This movie seemed to complete its potential plot hole with also narrating the motive of the man who initiated the spreading gas. His action seemed to be a “suicidal bomb”, but this time is done with the gas he created. To give an end to the disaster, the movie only give a simple resolution. However, it raised another question regarding the effort done by the authorities to stop the toxic gas. But again, the plot seemed to focus on the citizens’ evacuation. If I were asking about the worst point from this movie, I would refer to the last thrilling scene. The scene seemed want to create a sorrowful moment for a while, but it’s actually unnecessary. The scene would be better if it appears more details about the protagonists’ condition at that time, since it’s the climax of their struggle.

Despite of the mentioned shortfall above, this action-comedy movie still deserved my 8.5 of 10 points due to its brought experience. Beside of that, it delivers a sweet ending which doesn’t have to be too good for Yong-Nam. Again, I definitely have to feature Parasite and EXIT if I later want to list down the best movies I watched in 2019.