Make Yourself At Home

(USA, 2008, 90 mins, 35mm)

Exec. Producers: Sanghyun Cho, Hae-yoon Park, Jaejun Yang, Jan Vogel
Producers: Soopum Sohn, Eve Annenberg, Sean Meenan, Somyung Sohn
Writers: Soopum Sohn, Margaret Monaghan
Cinematographer/Editor: Soopum Sohn
Sound: Eben Baume
Music: Aaron Severini
Cast:  Song Hye-kyo, Arno Frisch, Athena Currey, Rob Yang

In Person: Soopum Sohn

In the past decade, the hallmark genre of Asian cinema imported to the U.S. has been supernatural horror. Films such as RINGU, JU-ON and THE EYE have generated cult followings in the U.S., often followed by a wave of Hollywood remakes. Though the copycat adaptations have proven commercially successful, the cultural contexts of the originals are compromised (for instance, placing a cast of hapless Americans in a Japanese haunted house makes the conflict as much about unfamiliarity with another world as it does with the otherworldly). Having achieved success in both the U.S. and South Korea (where he was the cinematographer on festival hit SA-KWA), Soopum Sohn turns the tables on this situation and brings it Stateside in MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME, where an immigrant bride (Song Hye-kyo, a well-known Korean star making her English-language debut) is brought into a cold Korean American home, one dominated by her frightful mother-in-law. Adjusting to the real-life terror of this new life (and more banal matters, like becoming obsessed with giving herself “an American name”), she also begins exhibiting a curious fixation on the couple living next door. With her ancestral ties to a shamanistic tradition, her means of carving a place in her new home are ghoulish and shocking. A true Korean/American international co-production, MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME places complicated issues of identity and diaspora into an intriguing horror framework. With its ability to invoke anxieties true to the Asian American experience and tap into the eerie language of contemporary supernatural narrative, MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME is a remarkable entry into international Asian horror cinema.

-- Chris Bucoy Brown

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