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I Saw the Devil (2010)
Kim Jee-woon, South Korea

Kim Jee-woon is an absolute genius, but he's also one twisted dude. To this day, I Saw the Devil is still the most violent movie I've ever seen. It might not be the most gory movie out there, but the type of female violence depicted on screen just hits you like a hammer. There's no sense of remorse at all, and the movie finds a way to constantly one-up itself over its 2.5 hour runtime to create something that is truly disturbing. If you thought Old Boy was violent, Choi Min-sik has a very loud and bloody announcement for you. And Kim Jee-woon is just so damn good. He's so precise and exact in what he does as a filmmaker, which is the main reason why you can't turn away from this movie. I initially saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2010, where Kim Jee-woon presented the unrated version of the film for the first time ever. In his introduction, he talked about how this unrated version was initially rejected by the South Korean censorship department, and rejected another 3 or 4 times before they agreed on a version suitable for human eyes. Being the first audiences to see this unrated version, and the crowd went wild. For a movie so violent, I would've expected a lot of people to walk out, but that never happened. At one point in the movie (semi-spoiler alert) when the killer finally lands on the opposite side of the violence coin, my brother actually let out a loud cheer and the rest of the audience followed suit. It was one of the most memorable TIFF screenings I've ever attended. I have yet to watch this movie again, and probably never will. But I have no issues recommending it to other people because it is just that good.
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