Who’s really “Next Door?” Yeom Ji-ho’s debut feature

Written by: Alexandra Bentzien

Programmer David Wilentz, writer-director Yeom Ji-ho, and translator Estelle Seunghyung Lee during the Q&A session for the premiere of Next Door. Credit: Gavin Li.

Perhaps South Korean director Yeom Ji-ho’s Next Door can be best described as a Hangover-inspired murder mystery unfolding Memento-style through the eyes of a protagonist with an inclination to freestyle. Oh Dong-min stars as Chan-woo, a young man who’s been trying – and failing – to pass the entrance exam into the police academy, though he finds himself playing the role of amateur detective when he wakes up to a bloody corpse on the floor beside him. Weaving between situations that are at times hilarious and in others nail-bitingly stressful, Yeom crafts a tale kept purposefully unpredictable: “I wanted viewers to figure out the real story for themselves.”

The genesis for Next Door was, in fact, film school, where it was conceived as a thesis project. Though the production’s coincidence with the COVID-19 pandemic imposed certain constraints, these limitations inspired creative ingenuity. A single location and a main cast of one lead actor and two supporting situated the film within a (necessarily) minimalist setting, taking cues from the 2002 thriller Phone Booth, with mise-en-scène influenced by films such as Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (two films that seem to top many aspiring filmmakers’ syllabi.)

With these references in mind, Yeom achieved a film operating within numerous genres, eventually arriving at an intriguing confluence of comedy, drama, thriller, and social commentary, in some moments satirical, in others deadly serious.

“If there was a tone I wanted to express in this film, it was a sense of irony. Is this really happening or not, is it reality or not? That was sort of the overall tone I wanted to achieve. But because this film takes place in a limited space and a limited time, I do understand that the cinematic logic falters in some places. In order to compensate for that, I tried to bring in more elements of black comedy,” Yeom said.

Though comedic affect makes the characters endearing at times, temporary amusement is not a strong enough excuse for their inherent faults. Yeom explained that these characters, to him, “represent those people who run counter to humanity, in a sense.” In conversation, he remarked that his own generation influenced the characters he eventually developed. “I feel like, essentially, our generation is a selfish generation,” Yeom said. “Of course there are exceptions to this trend, but I think there’s a certain pessimistic point of view that I have that was expressed in this film.”

A humorous sense of mystery only thinly blankets an underlying sense of mistrust among the characters, who each defend their own interests first and foremost: even though he knows someone has died, protagonist Chan-woo’s first instinct is to turn a blind eye as soon as he’s able to get out of the situation, with a sense of urgency fueled by a race to complete his application for police school, not the responsibility of caring for lost life. The landlady as well would rather cover-up the murder than let it reach public scrutiny, while a jealous boyfriend’s tunnel-vision obsession imbues him with fatal rage.

©Yeom Ji-ho

While some sequences of violence in the film veer into territory of camp, with glinting blades unsheathed to shrill shrieks and battle cries, rambunctiously drawing cherry-red blood, grounding these exaggerated slasher-inspired elements is the theme of domestic abuse, an everyday kind of terror hinted at but not displayed outright within the timeframe of the film. Yeom wanted to contrast a sense of comedic, hyperbolic violence with a commentary on violence that appears mundane, remains hidden, or is ignored, yet elicits long-lasting psychological consequences, particularly within relationships.

“I think domestic violence can be the most common type of violence in the world that we live in, but no one is interested in it. It could literally be happening next door, and no one would know that it is happening,” Yeom said.

Yeom was aware of the ways in which domestic violence can be dramatized by suspicious bystanders, whose subterranean curiosity leads to backhanded whispering among a watchful yet quiet community removed from the real repercussions of abuse.

“In order to become an actual piece of gossip, an event has to become sensational. So I had to consider what would engender that gossip, which was possibly murder, or dealings in cryptocurrency,” Yeom said, who also added his intention to use violence as a narrative device. “You could say I’ve tried to use violence as a tool to garner attention.”

Beyond producing shock value, Yeom’s intended to cultivate a sense of mistrust. This uncertainty works not only to devise the crux of a compelling narrative, but constructs a whodunnit that’s also a whendunnnit, wheredunnit, whydunnit for viewers who may find themselves floored by an unexpected series of head-spinning shifts at the film’s midway point..

Similar themes and narrative strategies might re-emerge in future projects, but as for next steps, Yeom is interested in telling a story of redemption. With his next film, he hopes to lean into religious as well as occult themes while continuing to incorporate social commentary.

In conversation, the young director articulates his aspirations with a strong sense of deliberation and purpose: “If the opportunities arise, I really want to tell as many varieties of stories as I can,” Yeom stated. His focus and sincerity reflects a sense of inherent ambition for building a long-term vision that announces: this is only the beginning.