Say Yes (2001)

That scene where C. Thomas Howell falls asleep in the police station and awakens to find dead cops? It's here. A villain who goads the hero into attempting to kill him? He's here. The love interest (in this case wife) who doesn't end up in a very nice way? She's here, too. And don't forget the vehicular carnage. Gotta have that if you're gonna remake Robert Harmon's THE HITCHER (1986). This thriller about a couple (Kim Ju-hyuk, Chu Sang-mi) menaced by a (mostly) motiveless psychopath (Park Joong-hoon) during a road trip to a small resort town owes a great deal of its existence to the superior American cult thriller. As such, it's very well made and hits the right shock and gore buttons even as it goes through the motions and director Kim Sung-hong adds almost no new ingredients outside of a somewhat difficult-to-swallow twist ending that doesn't really square with the the hero's character up to that point, but DOES suggests that both he and villain Park are just part of an ongoing cycle of senseless violence. Comedy and action-comedy mainstay Park fills Rutger Hauer's shoes with the same mix of sotto voce menace and unstoppable (and seemingly unkillable) force of nature, but he doesn't bother with the sparkle of bemusement in Hauer's eye that made his grim acts all the more hissable. Not sure the reason — beyond the difficulties most Korean filmmakers have getting sophomore efforts off the ground in such a small and competitive market — but director Kim didn't direct again until 2009's MISSING, a rather disappointing gap considering the potential demonstrated in this remake.

'Say Yes' is one of those flicks that you keep hoping is going to get better, but it never does. It's the kind of 'motiveless psychopath decides to menace an innocent couple' crapfest, so beloved of straight to video film-makers. The dialogue is clunky and, in several places, poorly translated. The acting is uniformly poor, especially from the villain of the piece, played by Joong-Hoon Park. He seems to think that by not blinking and trying to talk in a deep voice he is making his character seem threatening, when all it really does is make him seem a bit simple.The plot deserves special mention, as it is idiotic beyond all belief. The 'heroes' don't think it overly strange that their hitchhiker threatens to kill them. The 'heroine' twice manages to miss seeing the villain when he is no more than a foot away from her. The villain gets past a police checkpoint (while wearing a shirt covered in blood, and a bloody head bandage) by showing the cops a burnt corpse in the passenger seat of the car he is driving. The villain is punched, clubbed with a shovel and stuck through with a pitchfork, but never seems to be impeded by these, rather serious, injuries. And don't even get me started on that terrible 'twist' ending. Sheesh.The only plus point in this film, for me, is Sang Mi Chu. Who is very pretty, but really no more than a mediocre actress.Overall, this film comes off like a poorly written, flaccidly acted and shockingly directed attempt to copy 'The Hitcher' and 'Spoorloos', but it fails at every turn due to a lack of talent in everyone involved.

Say Yes is a taut, slick, thriller that deserves to be seen. Well made, well acted, well directed. It is fast paced, twisted and sick, as a good thriller should be.This is a film that balances nicely between gritty realism, and heightened-realism, without falling into the realms of "hollywood-realism". For example, there are car chases and crashes, but nothing explodes, and the cars stay crashed! While the story of a couple picking up a hitcher who then terrorises them has obviously been done before, this movie has enough originality and realism to make the simple premise fresh and entertaining.There are some quite gruesome and bloody moments to keep you squirming, and plenty of tension. This is a great little thriller and well worth a watch.

This technically well made but highly sadistic thriller is basically an inferior Korean remake of The Hitcher with a bit of Seven thrown in. While the film is different enough from The Hitcher to not qualify as a remake, there's no doubt at all that the filmmakers here saw the 1980's Rutger Hauer film--there are two scenes, one in a restaurant where the psycho tries to taunt the hero into killing him, in The Hitcher with a gun and this film with a knife, and a second where the hero falls asleep in a police station only to wake up and find the cops murdered--that are too similar to be a coincidence. As dark as the American film was The Hitcher was still entertaining because the movie moved quickly and had numerous well-directed action set-pieces. Say Yes, in contrast, is largely lacking in action besides the sadistic torture scenes late in the film.