Fantasia Festival is well underway and we got to review Mash Ville, a Western-style genre mashup from South Korea.
It’s no secret, that Moviehooker is a HUGE fan of South Korean cinema and Mash Ville has been high up on our watchlist since Fantasia Film Festival announced its world premiere for it to be unleashed to the world.
Hwang Wook directs and co-writes Mash Ville. This marks his third feature-length production with the other two being, Dog Eat Dog (2015), Live Hard (2020)
So, what is Mash Ville about? The film follows multiple characters who all end up in the same dangerous place at the same scary time. Primarily, we follow three brothers who’ve been brewing some spicy and pissy moonshine. It’s a big hit with locals in their small rural country setting. There is one problem though..the drink is killing people.
When the brothers find out about the deaths they hatch a plan to go into town and retrieve the rest of the booze before someone else dies from their death liquor.
But what they don’t know is that there are two homicidal maniacs with guns in hanboks walking around the village killing people. Killing people from a vast distance, the victims have no idea they’re a target… until it’s too late.
What I loved about Mash Ville was the morphing of multiple genres. There’s comedy and almost some slapstick humour but underneath the laughs lies a sinister story of two maniacs female hanbok clothing killing people in the name of Novus (Latin. a new order of the ages).
Mash Ville is also a strange production as I got the feeling it was very anti-alcohol. It was one of the very first Korean productions I have seen in which there wasn’t a bottle of soju to be seen. I’ve always thought that whoever owns Soju must have some sort of agreement or hold some dirt on Korean production companies – it’s everywhere – it’s glorified. There’s no glorification here and I found that to be refreshingly unique for a Korean production.
There are a lot of characters in Mash Ville all facing the same fate without any of them really knowing anything. But, I do think there were too many side stories, and I found myself struggling to keep up at times.
Mash Ville looks beautiful and is a wonderful viewing experience. Even with its comedic, slapstick undertones, it is a film that requires your attention, so sit back and enjoy those fake beards, poisonous booze and crazy religious homicidal cultists. What’s not to love?
MASH VILLE FINAL SCORE – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️6/10
- DIRECTOR Hwang Wook
- PRODUCER Lim Dong-min
- WRITER Lim Dong-min, Wook Hwang
- CAST Park Jong-hwan, Jeon Sin-Hwan
- CINEMATOGRAPHER Kang Hyun-gyu
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