Molayem ART Magazine International Art Magazine
Gory and absorbing sci-fi sequel is part Stranger Things, part Orphan Black and all action, with a ridiculously good-looking and super-cool cast
This expansive but absorbing sequel to the 2018 sci-fi horror feature The Witch: Part 1 presents, as its extra subtitle The Other One, which might suggest a narrative centred on another young “witch”. The first film’s central figure Ja-yoon (Kim Da-mi, briefly returning here) began to exercise her telekinetic powers only two-thirds of the way into Part 1’s narrative. However, Part 2’s heroine Ark 1 (Shin Sia-ah) is, from the off, able to throw whole cars around and beat people up psychically, having been raised in a secret facility where her superpowers were genetically implanted from birth. But Ark 1 was never socialised like Ja-yoon, the latter having been adopted by kindly if elderly normie farmers at a young age, so a lot of the time is spent watching Ark 1 adapt to regular life after she is taken in by young farmer Kyung-hee (Park Eun-bin) and Kyung-hee’s brother Dae-gil (Sung Yoo-bin). (In relatable fashion, she loves the food samples in supermarkets.) The farmers are being menaced by an uncle (Jin Goo) who wants to forcibly seize their farm, but like almost all the men in this film, the gangsters profoundly underestimate the power of slight young women such as Ark 1, Kyung-hee or, indeed, Ja-yoon herself.
