Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a drama, mystery, fantasy film from 2019, titled Super Me.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
Sang-yu is a lonely, poor scriptwriter with no job, no friends, and dead parents.
His main problem however, is that he hasn't been able to sleep in over half a year because
every time he does, a demon appears in his dreams and transforms them into violent nightmares.
Tonight, Sang-yu is dreaming about being in the subway when the demon arrives, grabs him
by the hair and after making a hole on the floor, puts his head through it, killing him.
He wakes up right after his dream self dies and intends to do some writing, but his landlord
knocks at his door claiming he's brought him some food, but Sang-yu escapes through the
window because he doesn't have the rent money.
As he walks the streets, he remembers all the experts he's visited on the subject of
dreams: psychologists, doctors, scientists, religious devotees and the like.
They all had different theories on what dreams do and can mean, but nothing concrete that
could help him in any way.
He stops at a food stand and asks for a crepe with no eggs because that's all that he can
afford, but the crepe man adds an egg anyway as a free treat.
While he waits for his meal to be done, he watches the café across the street where
Hua-er, the girl he has a crush on, works.
He met her years ago when he was hanging out at a bar with some friends and she was there
playing with her band.
Her singing voice was beautiful, and he has been thinking about her since then.
Once his crepe is ready, Sang-yu sits down to enjoy it, but he's suddenly startled by
San-ge, his manager.
Sang-yu starts running away and drops his crepe on the way, but he's too weak to go
too far and San-ge eventually catches him.
He takes him to a restaurant where he makes him watch as he eats, scolding him for not
respecting his contract and not handing in a script in time.
Sang-yu tries to explain his insomnia doesn't allow him to concentrate and write, but San-ge
doesn't listen and demands for the script to be done in ten days.
Afterward, Sang-yu returns to his apartment only to find it locked and all his stuff in
the hallway: his landlord has finally kicked him out.
He goes to a café to see if he can get some writing done there, but he's too hungry to
think and he ends up falling asleep.
The demon appears behind him then, puts his chains around Sang-yu's neck and starts banging
his head on the table.
Once again, Sang-yu wakes up in the morning right after his dream self dies, and discovers
his laptop has been stolen.
Having lost his work tool and starting to feel like he can't tell nightmares apart from
reality, Sang-yu sends San-ge a message telling him he'll kill himself and reunite with his
parents.
He chooses the roof of the building across Hua-er's café and watches her as he steps
onto the edge, ready to jump, but the crepe man interrupts him by offering him free food.
The man joins him on the roof and while Sang-yu eats, he tells him about people's different
views on death and dreams, and reaches a simple conclusion: when Sang-yu is having these nightmares,
he should tell himself "I'm dreaming" to be able to get out of them faster.
Sang-yu stays on the roof watching Hua-er until night falls, then he sells his cell
phone in order to get some money to buy food.
He goes to a convenience store, where he considers stealing some things but changes his mind
when he notices he's being watched.
The food he purchases is eaten outside the store, where Sang-yu is shocked to be suddenly
approached by Hua-er, who shows concern for him.
This is too good to be true, and Sang-yu quickly sees why: Hua-er is actually the demon, who
starts pushing him against the glass - this, to the store clerk, looks like Sang-yu is
having some kind of panic attack.
The demon picks up Sang-yu and as he stabs him with his sword, he throws him through
the window.
Sang-yu holds onto the sword as he remembers the crepe man's advice and reminds himself
that he's dreaming, which allows him to wake up right in the middle of being thrown.
In real life, he's also flying through the shattered glass, and while he isn't stabbed,
he mysteriously finds the demon's sword in his hands.
He runs away before the ambulance the clerk called for arrives, and he stays at the park
all night, examining the sword and making sure he isn't dreaming again.
In the morning, he goes to the flea market to sell it, and all the buyers' eagerness
to buy makes him realize he has something valuable in his hands.
So instead, he decides to go to a pawn shop, where they pay him the sword's actual value:
twenty thousand.
Sang-yu wastes no time and starts spending it: he gets a new computer, eats at a nice
restaurant, and stays at a fancy hotel.
When night falls, he takes some sleeping pills and waits for his usual dream to kick in.
This dream is also happening in the hotel, so he leaves his room and explores the hallway,
grabbing a vase and saying "I'm dreaming!"
but nothing happens.
He decides to explore a little more and that's when the demon appears, chasing after him
with a giant gold ax.
The demon hits him with his weapon and tosses him around, causing quite a number of injuries,
but after a few hits, Sang-yu manages to grab the ax and says "I'm dreaming!".
Once again, he wakes up with the weapon in his hands and no wounds to be seen.
The ax is sold at the same pawn shop and the money is immediately spent again: Sang-yu
gets nice clothes, a new car, and spends the night drinking with some women at a bar.
When he returns to his hotel room though, he doesn't let them come inside with him:
he just gives them money for a cab before going to bed.
Tonight he's trying a new trick: he looks at pictures of an important museum on a book
before falling asleep, and the trick works, because the dream happens in the same exact
place he saw on the photographs.
Sang-yu looks around, admiring all the antiques, before sitting to wait for the demon to arrive.
This time it arrives with a firearm, which goes against his plan - Sang-yu begins running
and dodging the bullets, but eventually the demon catches up with him and kills him.
Sang-yu wakes up in his hotel bedroom, but since he didn't manage to grab anything, he
doesn't want to leave the job unfinished so he swallows a sleeping pill.
Back in the dream, he begins running again and after dodging a couple of bullets with
a particular exceptional jump, he grabs two antiques before saying "I'm dreaming!"
and waking up.
This time, Sang-yu takes the treasures to professional antique dealers that make business
with rich collectors.
He gets two million for them and some questions about his methods, but thankfully he manages
to dodge them all.
When he's leaving the shop, he's approached by an angry San-ge, who had thought he was
dead.
Sang-yu invites him to eat at a fancy restaurant and pays him back the money he had given him
for the script, telling him he doesn't write anymore.
The next day, he finally enters Hua-er's café and after ordering a latte, he asks her if
she recognizes him, but she doesn't.
He also asks her why she's selling the café, and she explains it's because she has no clients
and the shop only creates debt.
Later at night, Sang-yu gets drunk while having dinner with San-ge, who wants to know the
secret to his success.
San-ge takes Sang-yu back to his hotel room and after putting him into bed, he pretends
to leave, only to come back and look at Sang-yu's wallet and checkbook.
He's suddenly startled when Sang-yu wakes up with gold chains in his hands and now that
he knows the secret, begs his friend to let him help him with this new business of his,
which Sang-you considers for a while.
The following day, Sang-yu buys Hua-er's café and tells her he still wants her to run it,
they can share the earnings but he'll be in charge of covering the losses.
To show how grateful she is, she invites him to dinner, where they discuss their new shared
business and Hua-ere expresses her suspicions of Sang-yu wanting more out of this deal than
just money.
From then on, Sang-yu goes into dream adventures regularly while San-ge protects his sleeping
body.
Some of his dreams include, for example, robbing a bank, where he shows how much control he's
learning to have over his powers: he's starting to fight the demon back and he can move objects
around with his mind.
He also starts bringing bigger objects back, like a red car.
Sometime later, Hua-er's café is full of clients because Sang-yu has sent San-ge to
pay people on the streets to come.
He's also left a bag of money for the crepe man as a thank you for the times he's shared
a free meal with him.
After the shop closes, Sang-yu goes for a walk with Hua-er, who guesses based on only
a few words that he's a scriptwriter.
Sang-yu begins to walk her home every day after work, and one night, he lets her drive
the red car from his dream, which he tells her is for her.
Such fortune makes her assume he's a very famous scriptwriter.
While she drives through the night, Sang-yu remembers the day he met her - after her show,
he saw her crying after a fight with her ex, and afterward, he followed her to the movies
a couple of times.
Sang-yu decides to take her to the movies in the present, which Hua-er accepts, but
it also makes her wonder when they'll get to see a movie he wrote.
Not wanting to be caught in his lie, Sang-yu writes a script for real and gives it to San-ge
to read while he dreams.
Since Hua-er is constantly in his mind, he dreams about being in bed with many copies
of her, so he forces himself to wake up pretty quickly only to find San-ge crying at how
good the script is.
Their plan begins then: they sell the script to a movie company, offering them their own
money to hire the biggest stars and make a huge success out of it.
They even create a special dinner event to commemorate him, and he takes Hua-er as his
plus one.
There's even a special presentation that goes over his career, which of course is made-up,
claiming he wrote many successful movies but he didn't take credit for them because he
wanted to travel and see the world.
A couple of days later, during a dream, Sang-yu discovers something very peculiar: there's
the body of a monk meditating, and when he tries to take his belt, his hand disintegrates.
He doesn't give up though, so once his hand is back, he tries again.
As he removes the belt from the monk, the man moves to touch his chest with two smoking
fingers, but Sang-yu doesn't look too worried about it.
The usual demon doesn't show up, and the treasure and the monk disintegrate too.
One night, Sang-yu takes Hua-er to the roof where he almost kills himself and shows her
a firework show he's prepared especially for her.
When she wonders if he'll ever disappear in the same sudden way he showed up, he promises
her he'll never let her.
Afterward, they go to her apartment, and while she refreshes herself in the bathroom, Sang-yu
practices a possible confession.
However, he finds himself having to leave because suddenly, there is something hitting
him on the chest, and when he checks it in the mirror, he sees two smoking black lines
on his skin.
Once he makes it to his place, he ignores the party San-ge is having with a bunch of
women and goes directly to bed.
San-ge gets ready to collect tonight's treasure, but Sang-yu tells him it's not necessary:
this time he's sleeping alone.
The dream makes him appear in a tall, empty building with a mysterious figure waiting
at the balcony.
Sang-yu comes closer and discovers it's a version of his older self that is now disintegrating.
When he wakes up, he discovers he has a new scar on his shoulder, and more scars show
up as hours pass, all of them matching a spot where the demon had hurt him in previous dreams.
The following morning, he goes to see the crepe man to see if he has any more advice,
but when he's about to arrive at his destination, a van appears next to him and kidnaps him.
When they finally remove the bag from his head, Sang-yu discovers he's at an abandoned
building surrounded by a gang of criminals, whose leader is Qiang-ge.
Sang-yu tells them he'll pay whatever they want and after agreeing on ten million, he
calls San-ge and asks him to bring the money over.
When he arrives though, Qiang-ge's men take the money and San-ge him as well, who Qiang-ge
uses to negotiate.
Not having any other choice, Sang-yu takes the whole group back to his apartment together
with an unconscious San-ge, where he shows them his hidden room with all his antiques.
While Qiang-ge tries to make him confess how he's obtained all these rare items, someone
arrives at the building to see him: it's Hua-er.
The receptionist announces her arrival through the intercom, so Sang-yu dumps her right there
to get her to leave for her own safety.
Seeing how upset this makes her, the receptionist tells her Sang-yu's door is still open for
some reason and lets her go up anyway.
As soon as she comes out of the elevator, one of the thugs captures her and takes her
to the same spot where they're keeping Sang-yu.
Qiang-ge starts teasing her, trying to get under her skin by pointing out Sang-yu has
been lying, and this is received with disapproval from another one of his men, who thought they
would only come to grab some money.
As punishment for his indiscretion, Qiang-ge puts on some golden knuckles and beats him
up while San-ge secretly begins to wake up.
When Qian-ge turns to Hua-er next, she kicks him in self-defense, and that's the chance
that San-ge takes to jump in with a vase he uses to hit the man holding her down.
Sang-yu bites the thug holding him and manages to escape, but not without getting stabbed
first.
The three of them run away while Qiang-ge shoots the man he beat up, but it's hard to
go far when Sang-yu can barely walk because of his wounds.
The men catch up with them on the stairs and one of them manages to stab Sang-yu again,
but San-ge sacrifices himself by staying behind and distracting the thugs while Sang-yu and
Hua-er escape.
Only one normal man isn't enough to go against two trained men though, so San-ge is beaten
to death.
One of the thugs manages to capture Sang-yu and Hua-er upstairs, beating them up and tossing
them around without even caring that Sang-yu stabs his back with a dagger.
The two of them pass out and Sang-yu suddenly finds himself in some mysterious ruins, covered
in a black substance that quickly goes away when he starts moving.
After looking around, he touches a glowing door arch and starts seeing a flashback of
his life the last few months, including both real life and dreams, and even a version of
him that was taken by the ambulance that night outside the convenience store.
When that's over, he walks to an area with a giant crystal wall, which he starts hitting
as he repeated "I'm dreaming!"
over and over until he passes out from blood loss.
Suddenly, his body starts transforming, and Sang-yu finds himself becoming the demon.
With the machete that appears in his hand, he starts hitting the crystal wall while picturing
himself as the demon in various conversations that already happened but giving them a twist:
instead of sitting there and listening, in these versions he imagines, he hits his landlord
and San-ge for not being nicer to him.
When the wall finally breaks, the demon comes out in Sang-yu's living room, where Sang-yu's
body is waking up as well.
The demon kills all the thugs without hesitation, even making his strange firearm appear when
necessary.
Then he comes after Sang-yu, ready to kill him as well, but he mumbles "I'm dreaming!"
and all the antiques he's brought from dreams start disappearing, both in his apartment
and in the rich people's collections.
Sang-yu falls unconscious yet again, and when he wakes up, he finds himself all the way
back on the night outside the convenience store.
Hua-er finds him and remembers him from the concert, so she feels pity for him and takes
him to her place to give her some real food.
While he eats some noodle soup, she tells him she's read a story of his in a magazine
and thinks it was very good, he just needs a bit of luck to make a breakthrough.
Until then, she offers him to work at her café, which causes him to break down and
start crying while it is revealed that all this time, Hua-er has always known he's been
watching her.
Sometime later, while they're working at the café, Hua-er gives Sang-yu a gift: a brand
new laptop for him to write on.
Afterward, Sang-yu meets with San-ge at a restaurant to give him back his money because
he can't write a script on demand, he only wants to write what he wishes to write.
Not only San-ge turns down the money, he gives him more in return, because he's managed to
sell one of Sang-yu's old scripts.
To celebrate, Sang-yu is the one that will cover their bill.
Many days later, now content with his life, Sang-yu goes to see the crepe man to order
some food, so the man takes the chance to give him back his money and shows him a scar
on his stomach, because he used to have the same power as well and learned this humble
life is preferable.
As Sang-yu listens to his story, the ruins from his last dream appear behind him, and
it's revealed the new demon that killed the thugs has been following him since he reappeared
at the convenience store.