Memento Mori

Memento Mori has the distinction of having the prop I would most like to own from a WLW movie. The movie focuses on a diary kept by two female students that chronicles their relationship. Eventually, this diary leads to the horrific events that occur in the third act of the movie. A well- designed diary chronicling a teenage love story that goes from cute to creepy? I would absolutely love to own that and read that in full.

Told non-linearly, Memento Mori follows two intersecting stories. The first, told in flashbacks is the relationship between students Hyo-shin and Shi-eun. Hyo-shin and Shi-eun go from being friends to a tentative relationship. This is all written in a diary the girls share. However, as Hyo-shin begins to get more obsessive about their relationship, Shi-eun begins to pull away. Their relationship eventually disintegrates because Shi-eun is not willing to be open in their relationship and eventually spurns Hyo-shin. The second story follows Min-ah. Min-ah finds the diary chronicling this relationship. Unfortunately, this diary is also possessed by Hyo-shin’s spirit. Obviously, this causes a lot of problems for everyone.

What’s great about Memento Mori, is that it had teenagers who act like teenagers. Memento Mori understands that writing a teen character isn’t just writing an adult character who’s maybe a little more horny and generally impulsive. There’s a lingering childishness to many of the characters. These are teenagers who still have innocence in some areas which is a rare thing to see in movie teenagers.

The film is a slow burn as a horror movie. For me, that worked. The movie builds up and allows you to care about these characters before bad things start happening to them. Memento Mori relies on the relationship between tragedy and horror. It takes its time making you feel bad for these characters before making bad things happen to these characters.

The lesbianism in Memento Mori is not happy. While the relationship started off incredibly cute and innocent, Hyo-Shin does take it to a pretty unhealthy and obsessive place. And then of course, she kills herself and seeks revenge as a ghost. So yeah, no happy endings in this one. However, it is a horror movie so I think having characters experience bad things and even die is warranted. This was one of the first Korean mainstream movies to have themes of lesbianism and I think it did pretty well with it. Hyo-Shin and Shi-eun are sympathetic and well-rounded characters. And while Hyo-Shin’s unhealthy mental state was also a factor, the main reason this initially sweet relationship breaks up is because of the fear of homophobia. So while Memento Mori might be too sad a movie to call “positive representation,” I wouldn’t call it a negative representation either.

The one critique I have of Memento Mori is that sometimes it employs a filter on scenes that makes them grainy and hyper-exposed. It’s the kind of thing you cold do on any digital camera by 2003. Editing the footage like this draws attention to the fact that there is a camera shooting this. As such, took me out of the moment. It eminded me that not only am I watching a movie but I’m watching a movie from 20 years ago that clearly didn’t have much of a budget. This effect really didn’t add anything and just dates the movie.

Memento Mori is more tragedy than horror but it’s fairly effective at both. The slow-burn of this movie allows you to care about these characters, making it more effective when the scares do happen. The lesbian relationship had a lot of screen time and was generally well done. Memento Mori is an overall successful horror movie that makes great use of its small budget by choosing to focus on characters.

Overall rating: 6.8/10

Other WLW films in similar genres