Kim Jung-hoon's mystery thriller puts rising stars in a high-stakes job interview that brings their worst secrets to light
Most of us have something in our past that we would rather keep buried. In an age when a years-old accusation on social media can pop up out of nowhere and get you canceled overnight, the worst-case scenario isn’t hard to picture: all of those secrets coming out at the worst possible time, say, in the last round of interviews for your dream job.
Based on a novel by Akinari Asakura, “Final Interview” builds a closed-room mystery thriller around that nightmare scenario. Six college graduates make it to the final round of hiring at a big-name tech company. Weeks of prep turn them into best friends, until they find out that only one of them will get the job. On the day of the interview, a mysterious envelope is waiting for them in the room with a damning secret about every one of them inside.
“Final Interview” is one of the first commercial films in Korea to speak directly to the anxieties of young people who entered the workforce just as the COVID-19 pandemic brought hiring to a standstill. In keeping with that angle, the cast is stacked with a fresh crop of young stars, among them Cho Yi-hyun (“All of Us Are Dead”), Kim Jae-won (“Yumi’s Cells”) and Shin Seung-ho (“D.P.”). Stuck in a single room for most of the runtime, they manage to keep the suspense going with aplomb, at least until the whole contraption spirals into a breathtaking crescendo of nonsense and schmaltz.
“I wasn’t too concerned about the room or the atmosphere. What I cared about was how badly these people wanted the job,” director Kim Jung-hoon said Wednesday at a press conference at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in central Seoul. “I tried to catch every look on their faces. In this movie, the faces are what you’re really watching.”
The director summed up the film’s message by referring to one of its key lines, which says that people don’t believe what’s true so much as whatever feels true to them. “People are so quick to judge each other on a sliver of the truth, without any context,” he said.
For a cast of fresh faces, the shoot was a blast. They rehearsed together before the set was even built, “like a theater troupe getting ready for opening night,” to use Cho’s words.
“I tried to give off this vibe like I might be the one behind the envelopes, so the audience would keep an eye on me,” Cho said of her character. “I talked it over with the director a lot along the way, trying to find the right balance.”
Kim Jae-won, making his big-screen debut, said he also felt the pressure to keep audiences guessing about him. “Everyone had to look like the culprit at some point, so it’d be a lie to say I didn’t think about it,” he said. “I’d only ever met audiences through TV and streaming. A big screen needs more focus and detail, so I prepared twice as hard.”
As for the romantic chemistry between his character and Cho’s, Kim was all in. "I'd give it 200 out of 100," he said. "I'd love to do an actual romance with her someday."
"I'm usually quite shy around new people, but he came up to me first though he's younger than me," Cho said. "That made things easier."
Bae Kang-hee is the relative unknown of the bunch, though fans of Netflix’s “The Glory” might remember her as the teenage version of Lee Sa-ra, one of the show’s monstrous high school bullies.
“It felt weird and kind of amazing to see my face on a screen that size,” she said. “A lot of people still don’t know who I am, so I hope this is the movie that changes that.”
"Final Interview" opens in theaters Wednesday.
moonkihoon@heraldcorp.com
