South Korean film “Hidden Face”, which is the remake of the 2011 Colombian film “The Hidden Face”, an erotic mystery thriller which turns out to be naughtier than it seems at first. Like many thriller films, the movie surely depends a lot on a number of surprises and twists along the story, so I recommend you not to read more of my review, especially if you do not know anything about the movie or the original version.

The movie opens with a sudden breakup between Seong-jin (Song Seung-heon) and his fiancée Soo-yeon (Cho Yeo-jeong), who is suddenly gone after only leaving a video message for him on one day. Because he is incidentally the principal conductor of some prestigious orchestra owned by Soo-yeon’s wealthy mother, Seong-jin is naturally nervous about what may happen to his promising career due to this sudden breakup, but Soo-yeon’s mother assures to him that everything will be the same as before between them, because it seems to her that her rather spoiled daughter will probably return sooner or later.

However, Soo-yeon still does not return after several days, and that causes a headache for both Seong-jin and the orchestra manager. After all, Soo-yeon has been one of the principal players of the orchestra, so they must consider hiring a replacement at least for a while, and there soon comes a suitable candidate for that. That person in question is a woman named Mi-joo (Park Ji-hyun), and she is also an old friend of Soo-yeon, though Seong-jin does not know that much about this young lady.

Anyway, Mi-joo turns out to be a fairly competent substitute player, and, what do you know, Seong-jin soon finds himself attracted to her. When he later approaches to her a bit closer, Mi-joo does not mind this at all to his surprise, and they eventually find themselves spending some private time together in a house into which Seong-jin and Soo-yeon recently moved shortly after returning to South Korean a few months ago.

Meanwhile, Soo-yeon remains vanished as before, and this surely makes both Seong-jin and her mother all the more nervous. It looks quite possible now that something bad happened to Soo-yeon, and it goes without saying that her mother comes to have some suspicion on her future son-in-law even though she does not signify anything on the surface.

Around that narrative point, the movie begins to reveal what it is actually about via a series of flashback scenes. One of these flashback scenes shows how Seong-jin and Soo-yeon became quite estranged from each other since they moved into their new residence, which is incidentally where she and her old friend once studied music together under their private teacher. In addition, it subsequently turns out that Mi-joo was not totally honest to Seong-jin from the very beginning, though you may not be that surprised by what she is actually hiding behind her back.

Now, this looks like a familiar setup for more thrill and suspense, and the movie does not disappoint us while providing a couple of supposedly erotic moments as expected, but then it surprises with its cheerfully naughty aspects. I will not go into details here, but I can tell you instead that I was frequently quite amused even while observing the story and characters from the distance during my viewing. Although its main characters are rather unlikable in one way or another, the movie still makes us curious about whatever may happen next along the story, and we keep getting tickled by its wryly dark sense of humor.

Under the competent direction of director Kim Dae-woo, who has been mainly known for his first two feature films “Forbidden Quest” (2006) and “The Servant” (2010), the movie steadily rolls its story and characters to the expected finale, and its three principal cast members keep holding everything together even though the story stumbles a bit more than once during its last act. There are several plot holes here and there, but the movie compensates for this weakness via its enough supply of tension and intrigue, and you may appreciate how the movie viciously and humorously implies more horror and madness to come after its very last shot.

While Song Seung-heon’s neutral acting dutifully holds the ground as required, Cho Yeo-jeong and Park Ji-hyun are relatively more engaging in each own way. Cho, who has been known more to the audiences outside South Korea thanks to her excellent performance in Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning film “Parasite” (2019), has a lot of juicy fun with her superficially self-absorbed character, and she is particularly good when we later come to learn more of how her character can be much more unpleasant. On the opposite, Park, who has been more notable since “Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum” (2018), is equally effective as casually illustrating her character’s darker sides along the story, and she and Cho surely make an interesting contrast throughout the film.

On the whole, “Hidden Face” is a fairly solid genre product to be appreciated for its dark thrill and amusement. Because I have not watched the original version yet, I cannot tell you whether this is better or not, but I enjoyed it more than expected as having some morbid amusement, and that is enough for recommendation in my humble opinion.