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The Dreamapia department store is just about to reopen after it was
destroyed by a fire, when several employees turn up dead, & chief of
security Woo (Yu Ji-tae) is told to investigate ... not a single task for him
as he, a former policeman, is allergic to all police work, since he accidently
caused one of his partners to be shot in a hostage situatin a few years back.
The case is of course further complicated by arrogant police inspector Ha (Kim
Myeong-min), who officially heads the investigations & who detests Woo for
having caused the death of another officer, & by the fact that that the
killer is really a spirit who hides in the store'S mirrors - but only the
audience knows that yet. Soon, Woo & Ha independently come up with some
clues leading to a woman - actually the only person - who was killed in the
department store fire, Lee Jeong-hyeon (Kim Hye-na), as it seems all the people
killed so far had been working in an office with her ... & Jeong-hyeon had
a twin-sister, Ji-hyeon (also Kim Hye-na), who is obsessed with mirrors, &
who has spent quite some time in a mental institution. But while detective Ha
only sees a taylormade culprit in her & ultimately has her arrested, Woo
digs deeper, & is soon receiving some messages from beyond which lead him
to find a certain account-book that could throw a bad light on director Choi
(Kim Myoeng-su), a businessman who has long expressed interest in taking over
the Dreamapia department store from chairman Jeon (Gi Ju-bong), with all means,
legal or illegal. But then an other killing happens, another one of Lee
Jeong-hyeon's colleagues, & this time everything is pointing to Woo,
& despite his pleas of innocence & claims against director Choi, he is
arrested by Ha. Only when director Choi really takes over the store does this
shed a different light on Woo's claims & Ha decides to facilitate Woo's
jailbreak. Woo decides to have a final showdown with Choi where he confronts
him with everathing he has found out, in the store, after closing hour, but
it's not quite as easy as it sounds when Ji-hyeon shows up too & they find
Jeong-hyeon's dead body walled in behind one of the stores windows (she wasn't
killed in the fire after all, but before that & the fire was just laid to
cover up the killing, with someone else being burned for her), & Choi,
knowing that he would be found out sooner or later, doesn't come unarmed ... &
when HA shows up too, also not unarmed, a big shoot-out follows, with Woo being
shot, but not killed, Ha being taken hostage, & Woo this time able to save
him ... but in the end, the day is saved by Jeong hyeon, the spirit, who
finally avenges her own murder (she was killed by Choi & her colleagues for
blackmailing Choi). Everything seems to be alright again, with Woo only
having to spend a few days in hospital, before being able to step out into the
world again ... only to have to realize he now is caught in the world behind
the mirror ...
A blend of ghost-story, crime thriller, & story about a man coming to grips
with his own fears ... & rather surprisingly, it is remarkably well done,
with its different genre elements neatly balanced out, with enough
unpredicatable plottwists to keep the story interesting, & of course the
obligatory good portion of suspense. All this might not result into high art,
not even a highly original film, but excellent & intelligent genre
entertainment.
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