My quick rating – 6.2/10. Revelations has been sitting on my Netflix watchlist for a while now. I couldn’t remember why until I saw the name Yeon Sang-ho attached to it. You may recognize that one from Colony. Ah, right. Time to get to it.

A young girl wanders through an alley during a downpour while some suitably somber music plays. A mysterious man appears to be following her, so she smartly ducks into a church. The drenched dude follows her inside, staring her down the entire time. Just cutting from that to Pastor Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) on stage singing his sermon and then to the title card is disturbing enough. The music was definitely setting something up.

The mysterious man gets roped into registering at the church before his ankle monitor is noticed, while we briefly meet Detective Yeon-hee (Shin Hyeon-bin), who happens to bump into the girl at a store. I could see that this is going to be a character-driven Korean thriller. Here comes the slight bit of mystery. Then the pastor’s kid goes missing.

Which is, admittedly, one hundred percent his fault. He forgot to pick the kid up, and his immediate thought is the mysterious man from the church. He even has a printed copy of the photo he took on his phone. Apparently Pastor Min-chan is operating under the assumption that the printed copy is the only place that photograph exists.

It doesn’t work like that, Pastor.

Yeon-hee has some unresolved grief of her own, and naturally these two miserable people are destined to collide. There are plenty of religious quandaries along the way, with the story digging into guilt, faith, responsibility, revenge, and mental illness. The main message seems to be pretty simple. Take responsibility for your own actions. Unfortunately, almost nobody here seems particularly interested in doing that.

It’s tagged as a mystery, but I wouldn’t really call it one. There’s not much mystery to solve. It’s more of a thriller and character study. The acting is quite good and helps keep things moving, although following a collection of constantly miserable people does get a bit exhausting.

Technically, Revelations is a very well-made film, and Sang-ho clearly knows what he’s doing. The police work toward the end gets a little too convenient, and the result should probably be better considering the talent involved. Still, it could have been a lot worse.

No, it isn’t another Train to Busan. But after that one, Yeon Sang-ho is probably going to be living in his own shadow for the rest of his career.