Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death Blu-ray Review

Kim Young-gul is a college student who mostly keeps to himself and has only one close friend. One day while out chasing butterflies, he meets a woman who poisons him in an attempted murder-suicide. Kim survives but now he too is suicidal and tries to hang himself. He is visited by a lively bookseller determined to open his mind to the powers of free will. The two argue, as Kim is not much of a reader, and the altercation turns physical, ending with the bookseller suffering a fatal stab wound. The man insists his will to live prevents him from dying and Kim takes it as a challenge and attacks him repeatedly and later sets him on fire. Kim remains suicidal but is once again interrupted this time by the bookseller’s re-animated skeleton that mocks him. Kim turns himself in to the police, but they can find no evidence of a crime.

The next day, Kim’s friend tells him he has recovered a two-thousand-year-old skeleton at a local archaeological dig. They sneak the bones home in hopes of selling them, but later that night when Kim is alone, the skeleton turns into a beautiful woman who seduces him. She tells him she must eat a human liver to stay alive or she will return to bones within ten days. He refuses to help her and she turns back into a skeleton. The next day he takes her remains to a local professor for profit. Kim tells no one of his recent encounters with the supernatural.

It is here that our story truly begins as we are introduced to Professor Lee and his beautiful daughter Kyungmi. Kim is hired as the professor’s assistant and he helps catalogue the man’s human skull collection. He tries to start a relationship with Kyungami, but she refuses his advances. She tells him she was friends with the woman who poisoned him and the two had a suicide pact. In her mind, the best way to profess true love is to agree to die together. Kyungami is not well physically and her father presses Kim to keep after her to bring her joy. Meanwhile, someone is collecting heads from both the living and the dead and mailing them to the professor. What follows is a truly bizarre journey into the darkness of one man’s fears and fantasies full of love, death and giant butterflies.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (aka Killer Butterfly) is not an easy film to summarize. The plot is ruled by a dream logic where anything can happen and little is explained. Directed by Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid), this Korean film is reminiscent of the early surrealist work of filmmakers Luis Buñuel (An Andalusian Dog) and David Lynch (Eraserhead) and is incredibly colorful with a palette that echoes the efforts of Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace). The script does not follow the traditional structure of storytelling, instead injecting a philosophical melodrama into the middle act and then turning things upside down for the finale.

Kim Ki-young enjoyed great success in the 1960s with a string of distinctive films that proved quite popular. His output continued over the next two decades with mixed results, but his work made an indelible impression on the film community. His films were rediscovered in the 1990s and were introduced to a new generation of viewers. Many of today’s top Korean directors cite Kim Ki-young as a major influence and inspiration. Killer Butterfly is my first exposure to his filmography and it is clear, with his unconventional style, striking visuals and wicked sense of humor, that he is an artist deserving of a broader audience.