2023 film “Abroad”, which was released in South Korean theaters in last year without getting noticed much by me and other local audiences, is one of the most disappointing genre exercises I have ever watched during last several years. At first, it seems to try to follow the footsteps of those dark existential thrillers films such as George Sluizer’s “The Vanishing” (1988), and then it also attempts to emulate the dream narrative logic of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (2001), but, to my growing disappointment, it does not succeed at all in either of these two different genre stuffs.

At the beginning, we are introduced to a South Korean lad named Tae-min (Jang Sun-bum) and his girlfriend Min-ji (Lim Young-joo). They have just arrived at the airport located somewhere in Minnesota, US, and the purpose of their visit to this region is quite simple. Min-ji wants to see the northern lights there along with Tae-min, though he does not feel that well due to their air travel.

Not long after their arrival, Min-ji and Tae-min come upon a big trouble. Mainly due to their delayed arrival, they are too late for getting a car from a local car rental service, and they have no choice but to depend on some other option. Fortunately, Min-ji can get a local driver willing to take her and her boyfriend to where they are going to stay during next several days, and the mood becomes a bit more pleasant when the other passenger in the car plays a K-Pop song later.

However, there soon come several bad signs to notice. Not long before the car arrives at Min-ji and Tae-min’s adobe, it could almost hit some other vehicle on the other side of the road, though nobody in the car got hurt at least. As looking around their staying place, Tae-min and Min-ji are quite baffled about how woefully unprepared it is in many aspects. For example, there is no pillow on their bed, and, when she tries to wash herself a bit, Min-ji belatedly discovers that there is no towel in the bathroom.

Although being annoyed a lot by many inconveniences in their abode, Tae-min looks for any towel here and there in their staying place as requested by his girlfriend, but then something very strange happens. Not long after he manages to find a towel at last, somebody knocks on the door on the rear side of their staying place. He goes out, but there is no one there at all, and then he soon finds that his girlfriend is vanished without any trace for no apparent reason.

When the local sheriff subsequently comes to the adobe along with several police officers, Tae-min is willing to cooperate with them as much as he can, but he becomes all the more confused as he suddenly becomes the main suspect of this inexplicable case. The sheriff surely checks out Tae-min’s story, but he begins to suspect Tae-min mainly because there is not any evidence to prove his testimony. For example, there is actually a security camera installed on the front side of the adobe, but, to Tae-min’s bafflement, that security camera only recorded only Tae-min entering the adobe at that time.

This can be a compelling setup for your typical existential thriller, but, unfortunately, the screenplay by director Giovanni Fumu and his co-writer Maximilian Selim is too contrived as depending on a lot of unbelievable coincidence. When Tae-min gets cornered more by the sheriff later in the story, he fortunately gets some help from two sympathetic figures, but the movie does not explain at all why these two characters are so willing to help him without any hesitation, and we only get more befuddled as some other character suddenly enters the picture and then plays a substantial role later in the story.

During the last act, the movie does not even try to make any sense at all to our increasing frustration. Sure, “Mulholland Drive” and Lynch’s many other works often do not make sense much, but they freely and colorfully follow their dream logic with considerable style and substance. Compared to them, “Abroad” is quite hollow and superficial without enough style and substances. While the story seriously lacks narrative momentum to hold our attention, its characters are flat cardboard figures without much human qualities to engage us, and we only come to observe its story and character from the distance without much care – even when everything is eventually explained and then resolved around the end of the movie.

In case of its main cast members, they look totally lost at times without any clear direction for their respective roles. While Jang Sung-bum is only required to look frantic or confused throughout the story, Lim Young-joo is hopelessly stuck in her thankless role without much to do on the whole, and the same thing can be said about several other cast members surrounding them, who often struggle to fill their respective supporting parts as much as possible.

Overall, “Abroad” is a total dud which only came to bore me more and more along its barebone narrative, and my mind kept going back to those two aforementioned films during my viewing. I still remember how much I was chilled by the starkly inevitable finale of “The Vanishing”, and I have always been fascinated with those utterly memorable moments in “Mulholland Drive” even though I am still not so sure about whether I can really explain everything in this endlessly fascinating film. Believe me, you will have a much better time with either of these two masterworks, and you can thank me for my inconsequential recommendation later.