Vanishing time: A boy who returned (2016) | Movie REVIEW

-Rating 8/10-

What if you woke up one day to find your best friend… 10 years older.. and only YOU recognised them?

everyone would think you’re crazy 😛

Starring –

KANG Dong-Won as adult Sungmin

SHIN Eun-Soo as Surin

I actually watched this movie by mistake on the airplane. Unfortunately I am the type of person to judge a book by its cover, so in normal circumstances vanishing time would’ve been the last thing I ever thought about watching (I mean it sort of just looks dull at first glance)

My ultimate saying is that everything happens for a reason…

There are some movies, despite not being popular or with high budget, that seem to pull on your emotions. 가려진 시간 or Vanishing Time is exactly that type of movie. Without going into details about the production of this movie or the fact that the director is not well known, I will tell you why and how this movie managed to make me feel excited, focused and sad at the same time.

The movie is based around the life of a young girl who has moved to a new school. She plays a typical lonely character who cannot seem to make friends. Once viewers find out that her birth mother had died and that she is living with her step-dad, we then seem to understand the reasons to why she is closed off to other people her age. However, it does not explain the beginning of this movie, where she is seen being filmed by a psychiatrist who is very keen to know about a certain incident.

Once the girl starts telling her story, we learn that there was a friend she made with a boy called sungmin. Not only did they share their time together but they even created a written language that only they could understand. This friendship was strangely made through their interests in souls and out of body experiences. The fact that they both don’t have their real parents (the boy is an orphan) probably explains this strange interest.

(I can’t believe I grew up without creating a secret language)

During this point, the movie starts to become magical. As their friendship strengthens the movie gives off a light feeling reminding us that there is a special bond in young friendships that adults don’t see very often.

Don’t worry, this is not a horror movie and he is not possessed. This is just the way the movie is illustrating how little Sungmin is feeling in his out of body experience.

While all this is nice and relaxing to watch, the movie still does not explain the title, vanishing time, until a group of young kids including the main girl Surin and Boy Sungmin end up on a forest mountain with a strange time egg.

What basically happens is that if the egg is broken, time is stopped for the people that broke the egg…for several years. Whether you liked this movie or not one thing for sure is that the way this movie showed the frozen time was absolutely ridiculous (in a good way). We literally get to see the characters in frozen time grow up and the way it is shown just managed to make me smile, laugh and CRY.

Watching this movie on the airplane probably made me more emotional, I mean the views from the window seats are breathtaking but that aside, Vanishing time really had me thinking and…it is all the thinking that made this movie so heartwarming. I will have to practice writing more to fully explain the feelings of this movie but until then you will have to watch it for yourself to understand.

So what does it mean by ‘a boy who returned’?. well, without spoiling much of the movie, the little Sungmin who we know so much of, suddenly disappears and reappears as an older sungmin. Of course no one will believe this apart from Surin who he shares the secret language with. Then the magical world is gone and the seriousness of the adult world (aka reality) sinks in – with the police, media and locals involved. Suddenly our Sungmin is seen as a perverted adult with an obsession for children and possibly a potential murderer.

Throughout this whole movie, I could not stop thinking about life, childhood and innocence. Whether this was the purpose of the movie, I don’t know.
What did I like most about this movie?..well that’s easy. It’s the fact that I can understand the feeling of both Sungmin, Surin so well and clearly even though I have not been stuck in frozen time myself or ever lost a loved one. Basically, being able to relate to something so not relatable is really interesting and new to me.

The only thing I didn’t like about this movie is how at times it really did feel wrong to see such a young girl with an older guy..but then again that’s the whole point. It explains why the locals and the police don’t find the older Sungmin so charming. It’s easy to forget that he was once the little Sung min. ALSO, the time freezing, technically (scientifically?) didn’t make sense if thought about for too long lol.

I could talk about this movie for much longer but this movie is really a magical piece of art that cannot be explained by a few words. If you are into psychology this movie actually may interest you a lot.

Honestly, how do you review things without spoiling stuff? My urge to spoil is greater than my destiny 😦

Until next time, the Big sister