Horror? Hardly.

The movie “Barking Dogs Never Bite” was more of a comedy than a horror. Even during the most suspenseful moments, there were elements that made me laugh rather than cringe in fear. For one example, after the janitor finished telling his story of the boiler repair man who kept saying “spinning,” Yun-Ju comes out and he hears a growl. Although the growl was unexpected, it was very amusing to me. The “scariest” part of the movie was when the bum first makes an appearance and emerges from the darkness under a pile of clothes. At that moment, the skeptical story somewhat seemed like it might’ve been true. Any logic and laws of nature were broken as that shadowy figure popped up, but then it was just a bum.

In this movie we can see many elements of horror from great minds of the past. The basement, for example, had an overall feel of darkness and mysteriousness about it which can relate to childhood fears that Freud spoke of. In accordance with Well’s ideas, many people would be caring to animals and be horrified at the sight of animal abuse/murder. That’s why many people would be shocked when they see Yun-Ju trying to hang the dog or see the janitor eat a dog. However, eating dogs is a common practice in many countries. In fact, my grandmother told me that she once ate a dog back in China and it didn’t really bother me. During the movie there were three scenes that applied to Carroll’s ideas. When Hyun-nam rescues the dog from the bum, the audience is compelled with curiosity to see if she would rescue the dog in time. Also, it is interesting to see whether the dog might actually get eaten or stabbed through with a metal rod. There were also two chase scenes where Hyun-nam was the chaser and the one being chased after. Those two chases brought excitement and again some curiosity of whether someone would get caught.

Again, this movie was mostly a comedy. There were many great moments that were suspenseful but nothing mind blowing happened. Overall it is an okay movie.

Honor is a hole

“Barking dogs never bite" is not really a type of honor movie, it’s a story just like happen around us. Yun-ju, a young professor who was lost his title in the beginning, and put all his anger on a barking dog in the neighborhood. Even though I really don’t like the killing dogs part, that’s the way showing the all Yun-ju’s emotion change. It’s like Zillman and Paulus’ theory “Dispositional alignment”. I really like animal specially dogs, so the killing part was against what I believed, that’s also the reason kept me finished the whole film. Compare to the kid and the old lady who lost their dogs to the three male charters killed or ate dogs in the movie, I see the phenomenon in our society. The kid and that old lady represent the innocent part of our society, Yun-ju, the doorman and wanderer shows human’s desire. Yun-ju hated barking dog in the beginning was just like he lost his job, he thought lost job is just upset him like dog barking, and he willing to do everything to get rid of his problem. After he killed two dogs, his wife brought a dog herself, and losing it Yun-ju realized what he doing was wrong. It’s just like his career, he was sad in the beginning because he didn’t get his title. After he bribe the college’s president and get the title as he always wished, he still didn’t look happy. To me, that’s the honor, a fear lives in a person and controls him, after all the struggles, his soul was still empty.

Our Poor Dogs

Eating dogs in South Korean is a very common thing, just like eating a kind of food. The character Yun-ju, who wanted to be a processor, the problem is that maybe he didn’t bribe the dean or I should say that he didn’t have enough money to bribe the dean, what’s why he didn’t get hired. It probably made him feel angry when he saw barking dogs, there was something wrong in his mind, and he wanted to kill dogs before he got bitted. Later, a dog was killed by him made him feel released. It made I feel like he liked killing animals. There was one thing I wanted to point out was that killing dogs became a part of his life. And there was a homeless person who killed dogs to survive, a janitor liked to eat dogs, the poorest thing is dogs, they get killed and eaten. In the west culture, dogs are our friends; we treat them like our family. And chronic thing was that his wife bought a dog, that made the character JUN-JU CRAZY, he tried to persuade his wife to give up on raising a dog, but he failed, the funny thing was that he changed after his wife bought a dog, Hyun-nam, a girl was a “middle person”, a part of her job was looking for missing dogs, she saved Yun-ju wife’s dog from the homeless. And the homeless was put in jail. Finally, Yun-ju gave the Hyun-Nam a hint that he killed these gods, and felt sorry that a old lady died because of him killed her dog,

That was a very interesting movie, I like it very much.

Barking Dogs Movie Review

irst of all, I feel disgusting in the beginning of the movie when the dog is hanged up and I seriously suspect the subtitle which says no animals are being misused before the movie starts. Look at the poses that the pity dog strikes, it looks so real that it is actually being hanged. And also in the fall of the second dog, see how it flies? The movie is made in 2000 and how it is possible to make the movie special effects so real.
Back to the movie, Yun-Ju is stressful of being unemployed and his stress turns into hatred when he hears the annoying dog barks. It stimulates his mind and motivates his thought of murdering the dog. After he finds the dog, he cannot bear himself to throw it off the building so he locks the dog to the closet in the basement. Again, the dog barks never stop. He notices there is another dog with an old woman who lives alone under his apartment. He plans to kill it and this time he becomes a professional dog killer. It is so sad that he throws the dog hardly off the building. Here we can apply Zuckerman’s theory, “Sensation seeking: appeal in which high sensation seeking people are said to be attracted to horror because of the increased levels of sensation these takes provide.” Yun-Ju’s heartlessness has increased in these two incidents. Even though he didn’t kill the first dog but it is ate by the guard because Yun-Ju took it there. The second time he actually kills it and once again the guard eats it! The audiences must hate these two guys so much through the scenes of horror is added more and more.
Also the movie is dramatic. Aristotle says, “Dramatic portrayals gave the audience an opportunity to purge itself of certain negative emotions.” I believe everyone who hates Yun-Ju in the beginning has differed their thoughts along with how Yun-Ju changes in the end of the story. Yun-Ju changes a lot after he realizes his wife has sacrificed herself with the money to bribe the dean to obtain the position of being a professor. He spends the whole night looking for the dog and confesses for his murder act.
This is a not too scary but an unusual black comedy and it is enjoyable to watch the humor in this movie except some lens of misusing the dogs.

Kinda Weird.......

Movie had its disgusting moments but I kept reminding myself that no animals were harmed in the making of the film. It captured the horror by the scenes that taken place in the basement with the creepy janitor and his creepy story. The gross factor of the movie keeps with the horror theme and many dog lovers would be horrified by the movie. The movie wasn’t suspenseful and didn’t keep you on the edge at all. I would say the part when the main character got drunk and almost hit his head by the train, it left you wondering if he actually died and that was did a good job in keeping you guessing.
It was a bit more comical if anything with all the cursing and derogatory comments. The part where the husband kept on making bets with the wife about every single thing they argue about was hilarious. The 100 meter toilet paper roll was very clever when he didn’t want to walk to the store to buy the dog milk. The villain that is in the movie is himself and his problems with dogs along with his dilemma with bribery. He really wants the job and in the process is distracted by dogs for some reason. The climax is when the dog is rescued and the fat chick bum rushes the bum LOL!! So funny I couldn’t stop laughing but overall the movie wasn’t too bad……….better than the Bai Ling movie we watched.

Barking Dogs Never Bite, but they can sometimes put you to sleep

Barking Dogs Never Bite is a dark comedy with elements of horror, that starts out strong, but finishes in a lackluster manner. The earlier scenes of the movie are quite scary, as we here the constant barking of a dog, which brings to mind the possibility of a Cujo-style horror movie, with a ravenous dog on the attack. Yun-ju, constantly annoyed by the barking dog, is driven to kill it, at first trying to hang the dog. However, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror while attempting to hang the dog, and it seems that he is so disgusted with the act that he cannot continue. He ends up locking the dog in a closet and letting it starve to death. The two dog-murder scenes in the film are good examples of Wells’ ideas about horror, in that horror relates to a preoccupation with the innocence of childhood. We associate pet dogs with kids, amongst other things, and as children we are taught never to do such things to our pets.

The Wells theory on horror works especially well with this movie, because Wells believes that comedies share the same aspects mentioned above. Later on in the movie, Sun-Ju’s wife buys a dog, and Sun-Ju loses the dog while walking it. He is forced by his wife to essentially search night-and-day for it, if he wants his wife to pay a bribe for him. So Sun-Ju, in a darkly comedic turn of events, is forced to search for the very thing he hates, the thing he spent the first half of the movie killing in various ways.

The idea behind the movie is very interesting, and it is fairly entertaining at first, but as the plot goes on, the dialogue and events get a bit flat, and the audience simply loses interest. It would have been great as an hour-long short film, but two hours was simply too much.

Human Behavior

The movie shows the story of a man who has an inner conflict. He is under pressure because he doesn't have a job, his dominant wife is pregnant, and he wants to become a professor. He is the product of an idiosyncrasy, in which corruption, instead of meritocracy, is the predominant factor.

His conflict is manifested by his repressed emotions, as Freud says, with an "uncanny" feeling. On the outside he has to fit into a male dominated society, however, at home his wife controls to the extend that he is afraid of her; therefore, he lets his negative emotions out on dogs. In that sense, to kill a little innocent dog is easier than to let his frustration go out on his wife who is pregnant.

Jung's theory of "primordial images that reside in the collective unconscious" is addressed in the dark and unorganized basement, since those are places associated with uncomfortable feelings. In the film, the basement is an underworld full of danger.

While the "educated" protagonist kills a dog due to his personal problems, the homeless guy kills dog for necessity. So who is the real villain in the movie? From my point of view there are no villians; instead, I felt compassion for them. However, the scenes in which the protagonist threw the old lady's dog and the one in which the homeless guy tries to impale the dog are perturbing.

To conclude, the movie not only touches horror theories but also topics of gender relations, youth rebellion, and poverty; however, it scratches only the surface. The themes are not fully explored and leave the viewer with many unanswered questions.