Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a comedy, action film from 2021, titled Sinkhole.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
It's a rainy day in Seoul when Park Dong-won, his wife Young-yi and their son Su-chan arrive
at the new building they'll be living in.
The problem is, the movers can't take their things inside because there's a car blocking
the entrance and the owner won't come out to move it.
After endless phone calls, the car owner, a man called Jung Man-soo, finally comes out
and moves the car, ignoring Dong-won's scolding over his bad parking and claiming he doesn't
need to apologize.
In fact, he thinks Dong-won should be apologizing to him for having woken him up on a Sunday
morning.
Now the car has been moved, Dong-won's things can finally be taken inside.
While he waits for the movers to finish the job, he gets to meet some of the neighbors,
like Miss Oh, an elderly woman; and a single mom that works all day and reminds her son
Lee Sung-hoon not to talk to strangers.
Once the moving is done, the family wastes no time in enjoying their new apartment, feeling
proud of having bought a residence of their own.
The following morning, Su-chan shows his parents that his marbles roll on the floor, always
in the same direction, which indicates the floor may be slanted or the entire building
is tilted.
Before going to work, Dong-won decides to stop by a gym, considering getting a membership,
but he changes his mind when he sees Man-soo is the coach.
There's no way he'll train with such a rude guy so he decides to leave after asking him
about their building possibly being tilted, but Man-soo hasn't noticed anything.
When he gets to the office, he searches for information about tilted buildings and the
area his home is at on the internet.
His coworkers congratulate him for having bought his own home and ask him about the
location, but when he mentions the name of the neighborhood, the others mention there's
an industrial complex in that area and a car waste plan, but Dong-won promises those are
long gone and the town is eco-friendly now.
After asking them to come over sometime to see how nice the apartment is, Dong-won goes
back to watching videos of tilted floors, getting worried about his place.
When he returns home, he continues to test the apartment with marbles and check the window
frame doesn't get stuck.
The next day, when the family goes to get their picture taken, Dong-won gets in a bad
mood when he comes across Man-soo again.
He helps at his sister's gym sometimes, but photography is his real job.
Afterward, they go to a fancy restaurant to have a nice dinner, and since Dong-won drinks
wine, he shouldn't be driving, so they call for a cab.
He gets even more frustrated when he discovers his drive is, once again, Man-soo, who drives
him crazy by ignoring the traffic lights.
The following day, when Dong-won's coworkers try to buy him a gift for the new house, Dong-won
asks them for the money so he can choose what to get instead, and he ends up buying an expensive
rocking chair that he won't even share with his son.
That night, a heavy downpour starts affecting the foundation under the building, and cracks
begin appearing on the streets, it also causes the building's glass door to track.
When Man-soo comes out in the morning, he sees the crack and touches it, making the
door completely shatter.
The neighbors see him standing next to it so they blame him for it and request him to
fix it.
Meanwhile, Dong-won sees the cracks on the floor and calls the municipal council to ask
them to do something about it, but they tell him all the residents must agree on the repairs
before requesting them.
Dong-won asks all his neighbors to get together to discuss the problem, but they end up arguing
over small annoyances and ignoring anything important he has to say about the building.
Afterward, while having dinner with his son Jung Seung-tae, Man-soo tells him to smoke
on the roof instead of inside the apartment to avoid complaints from the neighbors, but
Seung-tae denies smoking at all.
The following day, after work hours are over, Dong-won is having a small housewarming party
with four of his coworkers: Kim Seung-hyun, Hong Eun-joo, Manager Jung and Ahn Hyo-jung.
When they arrive at the building, they find Man-soo covering the broken door hole with
plastic wrap, and he finally expresses concern for the state of the apartments when he sees
the cracks on the ground.
For now though, Dong-won ignores him and takes his coworkers to his home, where they have
fun together while eating, drinking, and discussing the real estate market.
While Seung-hyun uses the bathroom and discovers the apartment is having water issues as well,
Dong-won realizes Manager Jung isn't drinking because he has to drive, so he calls Man-soo
over for him to be their driver and allow Jung to drink too.
Hyo-jung isn't very amused by this, because she wants to leave already, and when Dong-won
catches her whispering to Jung, he realizes they're together.
Hyo-jung denies it, but Manager Jung finally confesses it's true, they love each other.
This breaks Seung-hyun's heart because he had a crush on her, and causes Hyo-jung to
leave in a very upset mood, so Jung follows her out.
Man-soo tells Seung-hyun and Eun-joo he will take them home, but Dong-won freaks out when
he hears how much he'll charge them, so he invites them to sleep over.
The next morning, Young-yi goes out for groceries with Su-chan and realizes she's forgotten
her trolley.
Since her husband won't answer the phone, she allows her son to go back to grab it.
Meanwhile, Seung-hyun wakes up and rushes out of the building because he has an important
appointment today.
It isn't until he's already in a cab that he realizes he's forgotten a bag, so he makes
the driver take him back.
After taking his bag from under a sleeping Eun-joo, Seung-hyun returns to the cab, only
to find the driver talking on the phone some steps away from the car.
In the meantime, Man-soo is going around knocking on every door to ask the neighbors if they
have water, but since nobody answers him, he assumes everyone is gone.
This isn't entirely true, Sung-hoon is home, but he's following his mom's rules and not
talking to strangers; and Miss Oh has come back after Man-soo had already passed by their
apartment.
After coming across Su-chan and asking him about the water situation in his place, Man-soo
goes to the roof to check on the water tank, causing Seung-tae to hide because he had been
there smoking.
There's a man on the roof of the neighbor building who is watering his plants, so it
seems the problem is exclusive to their home.
As Su-chan makes it to the parking lot, the ground starts to shake, revealing a sinkhole
under the building that starts swallowing it whole, only stopping when the hole becomes
too narrow to keep falling.
Seung-hyun's cab has also fallen into the hole and after he sees another car falling
and crashing, he tries to open the door to escape, but the ground starts shaking again
so the cab slides down until it lands on the building's roof, almost hitting Man-soo.
As the building shakes some more because of this mini earthquake and Seung-hyun keeps
on pressing the gas pedal, the car slides off again and lands on Dong-won's floor, who
helps him get out of the car through the door window.
Then the two of them go to the bedroom and move some furniture to help Eun-joo, who has
been trapped all this time, when they're suddenly startled by Man-soo landing on their floor
as well after the railing he tried to hold onto broke.
Because Dong-won is worried about his family, Man-soo tells him he saw Su-chan taking the
elevator so he should've gotten out just fine, but he is worried about his own son, so the
whole group goes to Man-soo's apartment to find him.
They can't see him anywhere, but when Man-soo notices there's a pair of shoes missing, he
takes it as a sign that Seung-tae is safe, because it means he was out of the building
when the accident happened.
Afterward, they go to the roof so Seung-hyun and Eun-joo can use their cellphones to call
for help, but there's no signal down there; and yelling for help is useless as well because
nobody on the streets can hear them.
One voice does answer them though: it's Seung-tae, who has been stuck behind a door covered by
debris, so the group moves it all to the side to let him out.
Then Seung-tae reveals he watches lots of survival shows on Youtube, so he tells them
what to do: they should collect supplies to survive and try to find a way to send a signal
out so they know they are alive.
Meanwhile, a group of rescuers is already working on the area, but the situation isn't
promising: first, there are various explosions around the hole.
When these finally stop, they try to send some men to climb down the sinkhole, but the
constant shaking of the ground puts them in danger and they must be dragged back up.
The area is becoming too dangerous for civilians to stay around, so all the residents are evacuated
on a bus, including Young-yi and Sung-hoon's mother.
Various newscasts begin to cover the disaster as well.
Back in the building, Dong-won apologizes to his coworkers for having made them stay
over and is sad to find his chair has broken during the earthquake.
When night falls and it starts raining, they make a fire to stay warm while eating, and
Dong-won accepts with a broken heart to see his chair used to feed the flames.
In the morning, it isn't raining anymore, so the rescuers send a drone down the hole,
which quickly loses signal and falls on the roof of the building.
The survivors are still happy to see it, so they pick it up and start talking to it, hoping
it will record them.
However, at that moment, a part of the building wall begins to crumble and the roof gets tilted
badly.
Everyone manages to hold onto something except Seung-hyun, who is about to slide off, so
Eun-joo decides to take a risk and climb, dodging a rolling rock on the way, and grab
some wire that she then throws at Seung-hyun.
With the help of Man-soo and Dong-won, they use all their strength to pull the wire and
bring Seung-hyun back onto the roof, and when his eyes meet Eun-joo's, they have a moment
where they feel as if they're seeing each other for the first time again.
Suddenly, the wire accidentally gets loosed, and while the rest of the group manages to
hold onto each other, Man-soo falls into a pool of muddy water.
It's too thick for him to swim out of it and soon he starts drowning, and the same happens
to Seung-tae when he jumps in after him to try to rescue him.
Luckily, Dong-won reacts quickly and gets an idea: he runs to one of his bedrooms and
breaks the window, allowing all the mud to get inside and bring father and son with it.
While the group is busy helping those two out, the drone finally activates again and
flies out of the hole, managing to deliver the news of survivors to the rescuers.
Young-yi is happy to see her husband is fine but she's still worried about her son, and
so is Sung-hoon's mother.
The rescuers remember Young-yi said Su-chan had her phone in his hands when he entered
the building, so they track it and find out the boy is somewhere in the building.
As tv newscasts inform of the newly found survivors, the rescuers try to convince the
residents from the neighbor building to let them blow up the concrete under their apartments
as well to avoid a collapse, because the foundation is so bad their homes could follow the same
destiny as the first building any time now and it's better to move the gravity center
away from the sinkhole.
The residents don't like the idea of blowing up their homes, not understanding they will
lose it anyway and this way at least they could save parts of it, so the man from the
roof speaks up and tells them how terrifying it was to see Man-soo fall away and the right
thing to do is help.
Now with the residents' approval, the rescuers begin working on bringing the neighbor building
down before another storm begins.
Back in the apartments, Man-soo thanks Dong-won for his help and tells him not to worry: he
knows there isn't anyone else left in the building because they didn't answer when he
went around knocking the previous day.
Meanwhile, Seung-hyun tries to comfort Eun-joo, who is thinking about her parents and how
they don't know she's still alive.
To pass the time, they take a selfie together, and Seung-hyun is surprised to see how closer
Eun-joo comes to him.
At that moment, the group receives a very pleasant surprise: the rescuers have used
small parachutes to send down some supply packages that include flashlights, food, oxygen,
water, batteries, towels, and even a satellite phone that does have signal.
Seung-hyun quickly snatches it and calls their company to ask them to add Eun-joo's to the
list of the company's gifts, then passes it to Dong-won so he can call his wife.
But suddenly the phone starts ringing: it's the rescuers checking on them, and Young-yi
jumps in the middle of the conversation to tell her husband to look for Su-chan, who
he thought had left the building but unknown to them is inside one of the cars in the parking
lot.
The group immediately jumps into action and tie some rope around Dong-won to lower him
into the elevator.
At the same time that he enters the elevator through the roof hatch and the rescuers start
lowering a crane into the hole, their activities find complications when the upper half of
the neighbor building finally breaks and falls into the hole, completely blocking access
to the survivors.
The rescuers take the crane back, unable to use it now, and Dong-won manages to push open
the elevator door and reach the parking lot, but all the shaking causes the group to lose
their hold on the rope.
In the parking lot, which is already starting to flood because it's raining again, Su-chan
is crying for his dad inside the car when suddenly he sees Sung-hoon come down a huge
pipe.
He gets out of the car to follow him right before some more debris falls, blocking the
pipe and keeping him inside.
Debris has also fallen on Dong-won's leg, making it bleed, but he pushes the rocks off
and gets up anyway, too worried about his son to stop to think about pain.
He starts calling his son's name as he searches for him and luckily, Su-chan hears him and
calls him back, allowing Dong-won to find him and move all the debris away to rescue
him.
After they reunite with a hug, they notice something on the many holes on the ceiling:
it's Miss Oh, who tells them Sung-hoon isn't doing well - in fact, he's dead.
Seeing as the water is quickly reaching her floor too, Dong-won wants to escape as soon
as possible, but Miss Oh tells him to go without her - before he leaves with his son however,
she cuts some of Sung-hoon's hair and wraps it so that Dong-won can give it to his mother
whenever they finally get rescued.
With Su-chan tied to his back, Dong-won climbs up the pipe, which takes him to the outside
wall of the building.
As he carefully walks around the edge, he calls out for his friends, who come to his
rescue as soon as they hear him.
After pulling in both of them through one of the many holes on the floor, everyone goes
back to the roof, where they discover the hole has been blocked and the water is already
covering the whole building - it's only a matter of time before it takes them with it.
Resorting to desperate measures, they start picking up bottles and other sorts of things
that can float to make some sort of raft, but it's not needed, because Man-soo finds
their salvation: the water tank that has fallen from the neighbor building, which they nicknamed
Yellow Submarine because of its color.
Everyone climbs inside except Man-soo, who decides to stay behind and sacrifice himself
to close the lid.
Water raises, the building falls on top of the tank and pushes it down, but it quickly
slips away and starts going up only to get tangled in some wires.
Eun-joo notices this and asks the group to shake the tank with her.
Their pushing and jumping manage to free the tank, which quickly begins going up again,
but this time, the complications come in the form of a steel beam piercing through its
wall, letting water in.
As they start to push the beam from inside, Man-soo suddenly shows up, using the oxygen
that the rescuers had sent, and he pushes the tank from the outside, helping them get
unstuck.
Seung-hyun puts his arm through the hole the beam left to stop water from flooding the
tank and Man-soo tries to grab his hand to go with them, but he can't swim fast enough.
As he begins to lose all hope however, his foot gets tangled with the wires from the
tank, and Man-soo 's dragged up through the water with the rest of the team.
When the tank hits the surface, the group discovers there is a second hole that is quickly
putting them in danger, but luckily for them, Man-soo manages to climb on top of the tank
and open the lid.
It's at that moment that the rescuers see them on the cameras and rush to bring the
crane out again, using it to swiftly take the tank out of the hole.
After a very emotional reunion with his wife, Dong-won hands Sung-hoon's mother the package
with his hair, just like he promised.
Many months later, Man-soo, Dong-won and Young-yi visit Seung-hyun and Eun-joo, who are now
a couple living together in a trailer.
Tonight they're staying near the river, but in the future they'll travel around, taking
advantage of having a home that can move with them.
While sharing some food and drinks, the group suddenly gets scared when they hear some explosions,
but it's just fireworks, which they have a lovely view of here in the countryside.