One of my favorite filmmakers- the prolific, gloriously gozo Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) has directed a whacked-out new South Korean 6-part series on Hulu called Connect and it’s surreal, gory, suspenseful, action-packed, addictive insanity.
Ha Dong Soo (criminally cute Jung Hae-in) is a loner and self-isolated young man who composes haunting, guitar-accompanied original songs and streams them online (not showing his face or identifying himself). One night, while out walking the streets, he is kidnapped by a nefarious crew of body harvesters. A creepy surgeon slices him open and removes his eyes but Ha Dong Soo is not your normal young man. Anytime a bone of his is broken it magically heals instantly. Anytime a hand or leg is sliced off, red tendrils emit from the severed limb and reattaches. It’s a strange and inexplicable malady that he has had since he was a young boy, causing other children to label him a “monster.”
He narrowly escapes from the body harvesters, but without one of his eyes, and much later begins getting these headache-inducing visions of a serial killer (and donor recipient of his eyeball).
The fiendish killer (Go Kyung-Pyo) is this well-dressed narcissist who makes artistic tableaus of his victims and keeps a detailed notebook of drawings and astrological signs propelling his mania. He is named the “corpse-art killer” by the press. Any time he hears the Youtube video of Ha Dong Soo’s song he is seized with similar disturbing hallucinations and is hellbent on tracking down the cause of his visions.
Other terrific side-characters include a detective (Kim Roi-ha/Memories of Murder) whose nose bleeds every time he senses a clue to the case and a strange girl (Kim Hye-jun) who follows Ha Dong Soo and mysteriously pops up to extricate him from many dangerous situations. This 1st season is a compulsively watchable, wild ride.
