The Quiet Family is the tale of an urban family who after an offer to buy a mountain hiking lodge move to the Korean countryside with dreams of a new peaceful life. How ever life never goes as you plan and in this very black farcical comedy by writer and director Kim Ji-woon (Foul King, Tale of two sisters) that’s certainly the case. The lodge attracts no guests at first and then when people do begin to stay things take a dark twist.

The quiet family is probably best known in the west for being the source material for Takashi Miikes “The Happiness of the Katakuris”, and while Miike has lifted scenes directly from this movie, the two films do differ enough even for hardcore fans of Miikes film to want to see this, for one thing this is not a musical which as a long time hater of the musical genre, no matter how hip or weird it is means I enjoyed this film much more. Anyway enough of Miike, this is Kim Ji-woon’s movie and with the recent success in the west of “A tale of two sisters” he is now a very respected genre director in his own right.

The quiet family is the Kang’s, a couple and there three children to teenage girls and a son of twenty one, also living with them is the fathers brother, together they hope to build a new life for themselves in the idyllic mountainous countryside which is popular with hikers. After getting the Lodge spick and span the family waits for there first guests to arrive un-fortunately the hikers seem to pass by without stopping and the only visit they get is from an insane old woman who rants widely about evil and spits a lot I can’t find the name of the actress who plays her as the titles of the film are in Korean (sadly not a language I can read), but the performance she gives is fantastic, delivering an insanely (Pun intended) good performance. The Kang's though don’t loose hart as there is a road due to be built near the lodge making it more accessible to tourists. The road is delayed but the kang’s receive there first guests and thing appear to be on the up, that is until at check out time when they turn up dead. Not wishing to have the reputation of the struggling lodge ruined the Kang’s decide the best course of action is to bury the unfortunate lodgers in the woods near the house, they have however forgotten there’s a road due for construction in that area soon.

Kim Ji-woon’s “the Quiet family” is an excellent farcical comedy, the humour is very black, but genuinely funny and translates well even to a western audience watching with subtitles (The Tai Seng DVD does contain an optional dubbed language track, if you really are bothered by subtitles). Each of the members of the Kang family are realized well and it’s easy to get a sense of each of their personalities, which really helps the film to hit target. Son Kang-ho who played the lead character in Park Chan-wook’s powerful movie “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” is great here as the young son balancing his performance perfectly managing to be very funny while not becoming cartoonist. Choi Min-sik who played Oh Dae-su in “Oldboy” here plays the good hearted uncle who is constantly referred to by his brother as an idiot. All the cast however turn in a top notch performance that fits the tone and feel of the movie.

The soundtrack is great and each track fits the scene it accompanies very well, nice to see music chosen because it fits the movie and not the market for Soundtrack tie in CD’s which seems all to popular with films produced in the west these day’s. The Tai Seng (Region 2) DVD itself contains a featurette with the guy who put the soundtrack together and he explains the reasons for his choices.

Farcical and black comedy can often fall flat on it’s face (See the Coen Brothers recent remake of “The Lady Killers”), in fact comedy in general is often very hit and miss of course it’s partly down to an individual sense of humour to a point, but for me the quiet family hits the spot. I think it helps that Kim Ji-woon is not pushing to hard for laugh out loud comedy and signposted “Funny scenes”, rather he lets the film flow at it’s own pace and allows the viewer to decide what is funny and amusing.

Kim Ji-woon’s “The Quiet family is one of the finest black comedies in the last decade, cruelly funny and wickedly original

Buy It: amazon.co.uk