You Become a Star Too

A salaryman, his wife, and their young daughter win the lottery and move into a newly built suburban home, living the capitalist dream. But after the father embarks on an illicit encounter with a nightclub singer, his daughter is suddenly seized by violent fits and hallucinations as an unseen presence begins to take hold. Drawing clear inspiration from The Exorcist, Lee Jang-ho fuses supernatural horror with melodrama, veering between the two to produce a bewildering sense of tonal dissonance. Disorienting montages, boldly saturated colors, and a restless sonic landscape accumulate into a sensory overload that approaches delirium. The result is a film that feels possessed in its own right, a cacophony of audiovisual sensations echoing the anxieties of a society in the grip of rapid change. A singular and audacious work, You Become a Star Too anticipates the formal experimentation that would come to define Lee’s cinema in the decade to follow. 35mm print courtesy of the Korean Film Archive.