Silenced

Based on horrific incidents that took place at a rural Korean school for the deaf in 2005, Dong-hyuk Hwang's Silenced treads a fine line between gratuitously explicit exploitation and admirable taboo-breaking fearlessness while telling the unnerving story of a newly hired special-needs teacher who stumbles onto a barbaric ring of child molesters heading the faculty at Ja-ae Academy for the Deaf in Mujin, Korea. In-ho (Yoo Gong) is a well-meaning educator who takes the job at Ja-ae in order to help pay for his sick daughter's medical expenses. Soon, In-ho begins to notice children showing up to class with mysterious bruises and other injuries. Eventually, In-ho and Seo (Yu-mi Jeong)—a friend from the local human rights league—begin putting the pieces together about what's actually happening to these kids at the hands of the deranged senior members of the staff (revealed in a series of profoundly unsettling flashback scenes). However, In-ho realizes he's in over his head, facing a well-entrenched criminal element in the academy that has wide-reaching conspiratorial links throughout Mujin. Silenced features effective courtroom-drama elements, but the decision to depict the suffering of these preteen children in such creepily graphic detail seems unnecessary. Still, despite its questionable excesses, this is a harrowing look at the very worst kind of institutionalized crime imaginable. Recommended, overall. (M. Sandlin)