Bloody Reunion

Year: 2006
Director: Dae-wung Lim
Writer: Se-yeol Park
Genre: Horror: Thriller, slasher

Also known as To Sir With Love, Bloody Reunion is a pretty sweet movie. That is, sweet as in good not as in sweet as sugar and candy and things. In fact, it's probably as far from anything nice as can be, and that's just the reason I like it.

In Bloody Reunion we are being told a story from an older, sick woman in her hospital bed. She recounts the tale of when all her old students came to visit her in her home. She had been an elementary school teacher back when she was healthy and just wanted to see how everyone turned out after all those years. Each of the small class of students appears at the reunion to recount older times.

Unfortunately, the old times aren't so shining like the teacher might have remembered them. From there, the story slowly breaks down all pretense and gets down to business. Obviously I won't delve further into that but I did quite enjoy the movie. It also felt a bit awkward and worrying to watch like how I felt when seeing Meet the Parents for the first time. I'd say it's definitely worth watching this movie if you've got the stomach for some really unfortunate scenes.

As I'm writing this review over a week after watching I've honestly kind of become blurry as to what the reveal in the ending was. However, I would still like to mention it as it struck me when I was watching. This paragraph is definitely a spoiler so just skip over it if you're not interested. Apparently, the shy "turtle" boy was not ever a boy at all but the daughter of someone (adopted by the teacher?). I'm left really unsure when or why they then started presenting themselves as male. Or did they never and that is just the level of insanity of the teacher who perceives her own child as just a shy boy? From what I gathered, it seems they were always a shy girl, but decided to present as male after horrible events in her life. It was a new self to protect her from those old memories or something but she still had her female identity - presented as the teacher's nurse - to finally seek revenge. Anyway, whatever the root if they were presenting as an alternate gender it makes me a bit annoyed to think that's the way the writer went with it. I'm tired of movies where a mentally unstable character is also trans, both genders, or gender-nonconforming. Yeah, I'm looking at you Sleepaway Camp and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. And others.