I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Foreign Films That Don't Completely Suck




To Sir With Love aka My Teacher aka Teacher's Mercy aka Bloody Reunion - US Title (2006) South Korea


The movies opens with the police looking over an extremely bloody mess (a lot of gore for a South Korean film) and finds two women still alive, one young, one old and crippled. Both are taken to the hospital. The  young woman awakes and tells the police detective her story. She is Mi-ja.





A teacher (in subtitles referred to as MRS. PARK, always all in capitals) is now dying slowly of a crippling disease and stuck in a wheelchair. Mi-ja is a young woman she took in a year before, who cares for the helpless teacher seemingly with great affection. Mi-ja decides to plan a student reunion for her, one last party before she dies.


Teachers can either inspire us or scar us for life. I know, I've had both kinds. MRS. PARK, at the beginning, is described as quite the inspiring kind. All who gather at her house loved her. But things change rather quickly. It seems MRS. PARK isn't the wonderful woman first described. She gave birth to a deformed child which her husband insisted be kept locked in the basement. He later commits suicide in front of the child while the child draws happily with crayons. So he's gone, but she keeps the kid in the basement and the other children, allowed to play at her house by the ocean, make fun of him constantly. He keeps a bunny mask on to hide his deformity.


It is slowly revealed that her former students (and pardon all the names) Se-ho, Eun-young, Sun-hee, Dal-bong, and Myung-ho each resent her for different reasons. Se-ho and Eun-young, who were the president and vice-president of their class, are planning on getting married. They remember the time they were belittled by their teacher for being poor. Sun-hee, skinny and beautiful, was made fun of by the teacher for being obese during her years in high school. Dal-bong, who had dreamed of becoming a baseball player, becomes handicapped due to severe corporal punishment. Myung-ho was sexually abused by his teacher.


So you think she's going to get what's coming to her - but not quite yet. As the night of the reunion continues, the students start to die from the hands of a bunny-masked killer. Very violently, very bloodily. There is quite a lot of gore here, and some interesting use of school items to torture, then kill each one. During the movie, the bunny-masked killer is assumed to be her deformed son, coming back for revenge. Now things get kind of murky because the film keeps jumping from past to present and each student remembers their angst from their mistreatment. Even while one by one they keep disappearing because the 'bunnyman' is hauling them to the basement.


After quite a bit of this, the masked killer turns out to be Jung-won, a shy boy who was humiliated in class because he defecated in his pants, sent home with his mom who was then hit by a car and eventually died. After that he quit school, only just now reappearing for the reunion. So the detective leaves the women and goes to Jung-won's house, since he has disappeared. There they find the living room turned into a shrine with his dead mother propped up in a chair, quite mummified. As the detective searches the place he finds photos and nothing but girl's clothes. Nothing to suggest a boy ever lived there. This is actually a good twist. Jung-won, assumed to be a boy (why that is is never explained) is actually a girl, and she did not mess her pants, it was only a coincidence that brought the smell of manure through an open window, coinciding with the arrival of her first period. MRS. PARK knew this, showing her mother the bloody panties. For some reason, that is as humiliating as if she had messed her pants. Why? I haven't a clue. I said this was better than most, not that it makes complete sense.


So the detective now knows that Mi-Ja is actually Jung-won. She had made up the whole story. The teacher actually had treated the others well, and they had a reunion with her every year. It was Jung-won who suffered all the humiliations she described the others had felt at the hands of MRS. PARK. She had lured the other students there, poisoned the food and drink and them ripped them to pieces as they were found. Instead of making those students feel terrible, MRS. PARK had actually helped them lead happy lives, which Jung-won resented intensely, as hers pretty much sucks I guess. The detective rushes back to the hospital but both women are gone. Mi-Ja has taken MRS. PARK down to a pier and is telling her how tortuous her life has been because of her. She then makes a speech, something about those who live happy should die miserably and vice-versa. Not making a lot of sense again, but oh well, it's almost over. After finally purging herself of her hate, she commits suicide by jumping off the pier. MRS. PARK tries to help but only falls out of her wheelchair. The end of the movie shows the pier empty, except for the chair. MRS. PARK, in her grief, has also committed suicide.


And you know what? Nobody explains through the whole damn thing what happened to the deformed son. He apparently just disappeared into thin air and nobody thinks to try to find out where he went. Oh well. Despite its flaws, this movie still showed a little more brains than the average slash-'em-up movie.