He may in some sense reflect Minyoung’s alienation, a desire for revenge against a society by which she feels rejected, while fellow classmate Nochul perhaps reflects her concurrent anxiety. Mindless robots is however what Taeyong believes humanity to be, his quest for transcendence apparently also one of revolution hoping to obliterate humanity as it is once and for all.
OBLITERATION APOTHEOSIS FREE
Such language may be perfectly tailored to Minyoung whose only other interaction we see is with a dubious online church in which she questions her mentor on the nature of evil, asking why God could not have just made humanity “perfect” to begin with only for her mentor to suggest that evil is a choice that proves free will ensuring that humans are not just mindless robots following divine orders.
Taeyong’s quasi-fascist ramblings take on the language of new religion, talking of electrical “baptism”, death and resurrection, eventually directing a mystical prayer to the sky as if requesting divine blessing for his transcendence of the human form. Itae later takes her to his secret lab where he researches the concept of transhumanism believing that the next step in human evolution lies in hacking the brain, enhancing human physicality with technological augmentation such as the chip he has implanted on his chest apparently given to him to “cure” his OCD. On one such occasion she’s rescued by fellow student Itae, wearing a mask and firing some sort of laser gun. According to the police, Minyoung was the last person to be in contact with Taeyong which in itself seems odd as we’re immediately shown flashbacks of him bullying her because of her bulimia, attempting to shove junk food into her face. A classmate’s body has been spotted draped over a tree, his face and torso marked with what seem to be electrical burns. Then again, perhaps all of this is just fantasy returning us repeatedly to the opening scenes in which high schooler Minyoung is awoken from her reverie by a woman’s scream that might in some sense be her own. Playing with new religion imagery, Do’s elliptical drama sends the young woman on a quest for self-apotheosis through physical transformation, a literal obliteration of the self in order to be reborn as something more than human, yet internally conflicted in the costs and implications of such a “rebirth” even while her consciousness seemingly fractures under the weight of its demands. The troubled heroine of Do Naeri’s sci-fi psychodrama Trans (트랜스) finds herself quite literally “stuck in a deep loop” while attempting to transcend herself and escape her teenage angst.
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