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I should’ve talked about this movie before Huang Yan because it came out earlier but well, not much to do since I watched the other title first. Whenever this film is talked about, it’s compared with that series, Perfect Blue and the works of Junji Ito, and although I see the resemblance to them in some level, I found it quite different from them and quite unique on its own.
The premise is a twist in the surgeon drama/thriller formula that several movies and Huang Yan had, by removing the surgeon and replace him with a, well, beauty water, as the title implies, that works kind of like magic in an otherwise mundane setting.
The pacing is very good, as things constantly move forward and explore the themes and main character without stretching anything and preventing everything from becoming stale, in a rather short runtime, thus preventing the movie from overstaying its welcome.
Much like Yuxi in Huang Yan, Yae-ji, the female protagonist here, is mistreated for being ugly and yet does not change in personality despite her change in appearance, unlike that other woman though, the reason here is that this main character is awful from the beginning.
While Yuxi was brave and facing hardships as the clear hero of her story, Yae-ji is the villain of her own, despite also being its protagonist. Ever since the beginning she is shown as mean, resentful, egoistic, someone that lives off her parents (and I’m not just referring to money), and someone willing to go to whatever extreme needed to get what she wants. It’s very interesting and intense seeing how lower she can go throughout the movie.
Although most of those surgeon drama/thriller movies also had villains as their protagonists, they were either acting for the sake of someone else (“Le Yeux sans visage”, “Gritos en la noche”, “Corruption”), had petty motives (“Seddok”) or were cartoonisly edgy and evil to the point of coming off as a pathetic and immature attempt of the writer and director to make his film as shocking as it could (“Les Predateurs de la Nuit”). Thus the only other title that had a villainous main character as strong as this one in both personal agenda and focus is “La piel que habito”, and even that one changes the roles of the characters through a plot twist midway.
I mean, this movie also introduces another villain in form of a surprise villain and antagonist near the end, but it doesn’t do it as well because it’s not very well anticipated and the characters are not as interconnected as those two were.
Besides that, this movie also has some themes regarding the television industry, celebrities, and of course the obsession with being beautiful and how far someone can go to achieve that, some people even found symbolisms regarding the plastic surgeon surgeries and poverty. With that said, perhaps to the limited runtime, the themes are only looked into briefly and kind of superficially, so although a good inclusion, they are mostly there to flavour and complicate the plot than add real substance to it.
There is one exception and it’s the obsession of the main character, who starts to become crazy in the second half while she has illusions of the worst thing she has done up until that point, before facing her worst possible outcome and coming to the realization that everything she wanted was always there, and that she never could have been happier only for changing her outside, without first changing how horrible she is on the inside.
The resolution for the main character is very strong in that regard, but the same cannot be said about the overall story, which is fairly nonsensical from the get go thanks to the inclusion of what is essentially close to magic in a mundane setting. Huang Yan had a similar setup and didn’t need any of that, Perfect Blue had unrealistic scenes but since that movie was playing all the time with what’s real and what isn’t, most of the nonsense was excused as very likely not being what’s actually happening and just the distorted perception of reality of the characters. Here, the supernatural does happen in a mundane setting and it feels unfitting, especially at the end where this issue is taken to the extreme.
As it’s usually the case with horror, things don’t tend to make much sense but why mix it with real world scenarios and problems here in that case? The mix comes off as very weird. Besides that, you start asking yourself if no one ever had the same or a similar case as the main character happening to them, and how is it possible for such a dangerous product to even be allowed to even be around.
At best, you can accept those nonsensical elements as surreal or just an expression of its overall “be careful what you wish for” message in its story, but I feel like I’ve seen this excuse being used by horror fans for horror fiction one too many times to accept it.
Despite that, unlike Huang Yan, Beauty Water correctly chooses to focus entirely on its main character, her backdrop, inner fears, gradual and progressive corruption, and resolution, while making it clear that the others are supportive plot devices, so it doesn’t feel like there are any loose ends in the end, even when the final scene doesn’t really end the cycle, you have to watch it to get what I mean.
The animation is great in the beginning in both artwork and motions, and you will ask yourself why the rest of the movie isn’t like that as well, not that I mind it much, since although not very looking, the CGI is serviceable, the facial expressions are good enough, the backgrounds are pretty good, there are some good and well directed scenes showing the main character introspecting, as well as her going crazy, the artwork works well for the most gruesome scenes, and just like it was the case in Huang Yan, Beauty Water is not supposed to look pretty, it’s meant to come off as ugly and scary, regardless of how much prettier the protagonist appears to be, so the visuals have a narrative purpose to be the way they are, while also not bad on their own.
The atmosphere is also very good, there are some typical themes in it, but as a whole the soundtrack is very intense and absorbing as it should for its title, the sound effects are good, and so is the voice acting. There is no opening song in here but there is an ending, which sounds both sinister and sad at the same time to me, and it fits well with the movie as a whole and its finale in particular.
So, beyond all the nonsense in its script and resolution thanks to the weird mix of fantasy elements in what is otherwise supposed to be a mundane setting with real world issues, and not being as good as another review about it that I read said it is, I found Beauty Water to be a pretty good one time “be careful what you wish for” type of story that combines psychological thriller with body horror well enough, and it’s the best Korean animation I watched so far as well as the best Asian animation from the year 2020 that I watched.
Kinda similar stuff
-Les Yeux sans visage (1960 French movie that started the surgeon drama/thriller premise, very basic in plot and writing but for its time solid in atmosphere, visuals and drama).
-La piel que habito (2011 Spanish movie and the most solid plastic surgeon drama/thriller out of the live action ones, the plot is basic but overall good for how twisted and interconnected the characters are, and the resolution is pretty great).
-Huang Yan (Donghua about a woman that gets bullied for being ugly, and kind of starts a relationship with the plastic surgeon that changed her, who in turn is obsessed with remaking women as close as possible to his wife that’s in a coma).
-Perfect Blue (Famous psychological thriller/horror anime movie about a former idol actress that becomes crazy because of a creepy stalker and lot of shit she has to deal with in her new career, way better than this one in everything).
-Junju Ito’s works (but only for a similar type of body horror and “surreal” nonsensical plots).
7/10
