On a lovely Sunday, I decided to scroll through Netflix to see what movie I can watch for the day. I chanced upon this movie that was tagged as “Leaving Soon”. As a true crime addict, I did heard of it before from Rotten Mango, hosted by Stephanie Soo. You can watch the episode below on YouTube on the real case of Inhwa Boarding School.

Or if you can’t stomach watching it, you can also listen to the podcast episode below on Spotify.

While the movie was based on a novel called The Crucible written by Gong Ji Young, it was inspired by the above horrific true story.

Before you go any further, a little warning that there’s mentions of child abuse.

Silenced starred Gong Yoo as Kang In Ho, an art teacher who was recommended to a school for the deaf in the foggy town of Mujin for his sign language skills. The fogginess of the town is a precursor of what you can expect for the rest of the movie. It is bleak and depressing.

When he first stepped into the school, In Ho did feel something was strange with the school. He tried to communicate with a female student who ignored him. Afterwards, a male student walked late into the class, bruised and beaten.

After working late to find the background profile of his students, he heard strange noises coming from the girls’ bathroom. He was about to open the door but was stopped by the security guard who was doing his rounds. Hesitantly, he walked away.

The next day, while he was about to go home, he found a girl sitting on the ledge of a window. He ran back up to the dormitory room and managed to safely pulled her in. Due to his honesty, he earned the trust of the girl who pulled him to a room down a staircase. He walked into the room and found Yoon Jae Ae, played by Kim Joo Ryoung (famed for her role in Squid Game), dunking the head of a female student, Yeon Doo, into a washing machine. He brought the girl to a hospital and called Yoo Jin, his new friend and a human rights activist, for help. There, Yeon Doo told Yoo Jin of the atrocities behind the school – the abuse of the helpless students.

In Ho and Yoo Jin decided to expose the horrific abuses of the three main students – Min Su, Yoo Ri and Yeon Doo. The three main culprits, the headmaster, his twin brother who was an admin head and a teacher, denied the accusations.

When the police officer who was in cahoots with the culprits refused to investigate the matter, a TV station from Seoul decided to interview the victims and it made nationwide headlines. Due to this, the police department had to arrest the culprits and court proceedings ensued.

A large part of the movie was based on the court proceedings. The audience will silently get behind both the prosecutor and the judge who were seemingly going the victims’ way. Alas, money talks and justice was not served, a victim lost his life and the audience, aka me, is horrified.

As someone who is a crime junkie, not many stories can rile me up because I am used to it. At times, I can even eat while watching or listening to these stories relatively calm. Yet, this movie is so disturbing that it broke me. I initially did not even want to write this review. My brain is effectively broken. The fact that this is a true story makes me even angrier. How can a justice system be so extremely biased towards the rich and how can it be bought by money?

One good news to come out of this? It sparked a public outcry that the real case had to be re-opened and the culprits received harsher punishments. The lawmakers in South Korea also introduced new bills for the human rights of the vulnerable.

Do I recommend this movie? Yes, if you can stomach it. I will warn you that it will break you. There were scenes shown that were so disturbing that I had to turn away. I do have to give props to the young actors. If I were them, I will not have the mental capacity to pull off the roles. One of them is Kim Hyun Soo who is notable for her role in The Penthouse as Bae Ro Na. She played Yeon Doo in this movie.

As for the adult actors, you will feel the helplessness behind Gong Yoo’s character of In Ho. He was stuck in between taking care of his sick daughter and bringing justice to the vulnerable children. I also have to give props to Jang Gwang who acted as the twin. As an audience, we know that acting twins is never easy. You have to act as two different personas technically even though it is a set of twins. Acting as a villain and having to act out those disturbing scenes was probably not easy for him as well.

I’ll give this movie a 5 out of 5. No matter how disturbing it is, I find no flaws. They showed what they had to show to bring out the emotions of the audience (anger, frustration, disturbed, sadness, helplessness). If a movie can bring these out that they had to re-open the actual case, that is a win as well. No award is better than justice prevailing, even if it is years later.

You can watch the trailer below and watch the movie on Netflix before it is gone.

If you have watched the movie, let me know what you think in the comments section. Kindly refrain from using harsh words and keep the discussion calm.