25

TUESDAY

At first, it seems the mountain lodge purchased by a Korean extended family will fail; none of the hikers passing by rent rooms. Then guests start arriving, and things get worse. Each of them dies, and the clan’s patriarch insists on quietly burying the bodies rather than let the inn risk a reputation that’s entirely deserved: as a place where door-slamming hotel farce meets campy horror movie. If the plot of Kim Ji-woon’s 1998 The Quiet Family sounds familiar, it’s probably because Japanese B-movie madman Takashi Miike remade it three years later as The Happiness of the Katakuris, conflating the plot with that of The Sound of Music. The original is considerably more coherent, although not without outbursts of hysteria. It’s clear, too, where Miike got the idea of making it a musical: Kim cues the action to ironic oldies by the Box Tops, the Partridge Family, and more. The film screens at 6:30 p.m. at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea, 2370 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Free. (202) 797-6346. (Mark Jenkins)