The Quiet Family (1998) Reviews

Ji-Woon Kim directs this film about a family who opens a lodge, only to be met with a series of unfortunate events that lead to the deaths of their guests, the family's response to which is to secretly bury them in the nearby forest to avoid a shutdown of their business. Seeing Kang-ho Song and Choi-min Sik together in this comedy is definitely a treat.
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This review refers to the Special Edition version. The film has excellent production values (acting, directing, sound and cinematography), with the acting being especially exceptional. It was surprising to hear western style music for the soundtrack. The film's only notable negatives were subtitles that infrequently displayed off screen and scenes that were too dark. While there was a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio option, the audio seemed output in stereo. There is a "Director's Audio Commentary" option in the setup menu, but unfortunately the audio constantly lagged the video by about twenty seconds. As for extras, there's an uninteresting "The Quiet Family Interviews" feature (38:13 min) - produced years after the film, a "Making Of" feature (6:29 min), a "Music Video" feature (5:38 min) featuring two songs, a "Storyboard Comparisons" feature (3:53 min), an "Interview with the Composer" feature (5:28 min), an "Original Korean Trailer" and five other trailers. Definitely recommended.
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Very funny, very cute. And you can't go wrong with Song Kang-ho (goofy dad in The Host). The mother and father are deadpan hilarious. Hard to believe that the actor playing the father is Oldboy! The extras are cool, too, if you like behind-the-scenes stuff.
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This may be a very humorous movie if you understand Korean. It's possible that the Korean to English translation wasn't exactly captured with the closed captioning. However, the intended humor is very, very repetitious. I would not recommend this movie. It becomes very tedious.
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