AM 11:00 (2013) – Korean Movie Review

Review

AM 11:00 stars Jung Jae-young (Someone Special), Kim Ok-bin (The Villainess) and Daniel Choi. This Sci-Fi thriller underperformed domestically at the box office and was almost completely overlooked abroad, but AM 11:00 remains one of the more watchable Sci-Fi offerings from South Korea. Complete with top notch visuals and a time-bending story that sees the epic meltdown of small crew of underwater scientists as they desperately attempt to fight their inescapable futures.

Using a particle accelerator deep within a blue hole on the ocean floor, a team of scientists work tirelessly to create a mini black hole in order to produce a wormhole into the future in which they plan to traverse through. After three years of unimpressive results and their future funding unclear, the crew is ordered to put everything on hold for the Christmas holiday. But before their evacuation day, a small team of dedicated scientists lead by Woo-suk (Jung Jae-young) decide to pursue new calculations that could produce the hard evidence of time travel needed to ensure further funding.

The team decides to conduct a final simulation capable of harnessing enough energy to send two crew members (Jung Jae-young & Kim Ok-bin) 24 hours into the future for only 15 minutes as their last ditch effort at making a breakthrough. But when their short trip to the future reveals not only a laboratory in shambles and an unstable reactor core, but an unidentified person also tries to kill the crew upon arrival. In their panic to return, disastrous results leave one crew member behind in the future. Using the collected CCTV data from the time traveled trip, the remaining team of scientists have just 24 hours to unlock a mystery that could change both the destiny of the laboratory and themselves.

This is one of those inescapable time paradox type Sci-Fi films that is moderately engaging as it later devolves into more of a by the numbers survival thriller that will leave you guessing who to trust. There are some cheesy one liners in AM 11:00 and somewhat of an uninspired soundtrack especially towards the early parts of the movie that hinder the overall experience. And there are some shaky attempts at explaining the various scientific principles at the heart of their deep sea creation that don’t do a great job at establishing the characters as believable experts in their field that also hold AM 11:00 back a bit. This is further exasperated when the characters overlook an obvious clue that almost every audience member will pick up on initially.

But besides not offering a whole lot in the way of new experiences, AM 11:00 is a very watchable and moderately fun Sci-Fi thriller. I enjoyed witnessing the crew’s epic breakdown after they gained knowledge of their final moments from the future. How each team member’s destiny plays out and their efforts to change what seems to be an inescapable future within only a 24 hour window becomes the meat and bones of the film’s entertainment. Fans of time paradoxes will undoubtedly get some kicks out of it.

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