the witch part 2 movie review

The Witch: Part 2. The Other One

You don’t need to watch the bloody/angsty Korean superhero/horror hybrid “The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion” if you’re only curious about its sequel, “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One.” Both “ The Witch ” movies borrow enough of the style and tropes of popular American genre movies that all you need to know about “Part 1” is that it’s basically a Korean version of Stephen King ’s “Firestarter,” only bloodier and now more like an “ X-Men ” superhero adventure. 

“Part 2” is more of that story—Goo Ja-yoon ( Kim Da-mi ), a mysterious young girl with super-powers, escapes a shady prison-like science lab and then tries to evade a bunch of people who come looking for her—but with a different young protagonist, Cynthia (Shin Si-ah). Neither girl can remember their pre-lab past, but they both develop new attachments with various side characters. 

There’s a lot of bloodshed in both movies, some rubbery-looking computer graphics mayhem, and a surplus of swearing. That’s all part of these genre hybrids’ appeal: like some of the better American superhero movies and TV shows, “The Witch: Part 1” and its sequel feel like they’re actually trying to appeal to a target audience of teenage boys and girls. I mean, yes, there are several female leads, but more importantly, those characters get to do more than just act out the usual pseudo-empowering revanchist fantasies that pass for bubblegum feminism. “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” may be lumpier and more unfocused than its predecessor, but it doesn’t rehash what came before it.

A good part of what makes “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” satisfying is that it’s a sequel and therefore part of a prefabricated narrative and genre. There’s a lot of welcome teenage and teenage-friendly melodrama here and it’s not always what you might expect. Even Cynthia, a clone who was originally named ADP (Ark 1 Datum Point), finds a little potential for romance after she escapes the Ark lab facility and stumbles into Kyung-hee ( Park Eun-bin ) and her oafish brother Dae-gil (Sung Yoo-bin). It’s mostly only potential since “Part 2” feels like an overly elaborate bridge between “Part 1” and an inevitable “Part 3.” 

Still, it’s refreshing to see flirtation and even buddy comedy chemistry as the foundation for many of this movie’s criss-crossing relationships, including the better-developed of the two pairs of mercenaries that chase after Cynthia, the whiskey-and-swears tomboy Jo-hyeon (Seo Eun-soo) and her South African beardo partner ( Justin John Harvey ). There’s also a brother-sister pair of Shanghainese killers that are unleashed on Cynthia by a different shadowy organization. But the most important thing to know here is: everybody wants to either kidnap or ally with Cynthia, and they’re all somehow related to each other.

No, seriously, everybody in this movie is somebody’s ex-partner, sibling, or potential future partner. The good news for the idly curious viewer is: you don’t need to keep a detailed scorecard of these connections. It certainly helps to know that the wheelchair-bound Doctor Baek (Jo Min-su) has a cordial rivalry with Jang ( Lee Jong-suk ), and that they’re both still looking for Ja-yoon after the events of “The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion.” But much of “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” concerns the confluence of overlapping minders and captors that surround Cynthia. There’s also a decent-sized B-story involving Kyung-hee and Dae-gil, who are already embroiled in a western-style plot to protect their dead dad’s land from murderous uncle Yong-du ( Jin Goo ). But all sub-plots come back to Cynthia, a blessedly uncomplicated character with no past and a striking resemblance to Ja-yoon. 

Some blood-soaked and perhaps overly busy action scenes suggest that the makers of “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” still don’t know how to synthesize their overstuffed grab bag of pulpy tropes and stock characters. Even Harvey’s character points out (repeatedly) that Jo-hyeon curses a lot, though that isn’t so strange given how many recent American super-shows have leaned into gore and four-letter words to establish their adolescent bonafides. “The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” feels like a soapier alternative to those series, right down to its convoluted backstories and slow-fast-slow pace. This movie is 137 minutes long and definitely feels like it. 

“The Witch: Part 2. The Other One” resembles the sort of movie that you used to find in the fifth or sixth auditorium of your local second-run movie theater at the dead center of a triple-digit summer. Or maybe it’s more like the shaggy dog super-movies that proliferated in the 1990s, back when American movie studios didn’t know how to consistently lure general audiences with super-stories. I’m not sure where this particular wannabe franchise is going or if anybody but initiated viewers will care to find out, but I could watch another one.

Now playing in select theaters.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

• Shin Si-a as Cynthia
• Park Eun-bin as Gyeong-hee
• Seo Eun-su as Jo-hyun
• Jin Goo as Yong-doo
• Seong Yu-bin as Dae-gil
• Justin John Harvey as
• Cho Min-soo as Dr. Baek
• Cha Soon-bae as
• Lee Jong-suk as Director Jang
• Kim Da-mi as Koo Ja-yoon
• Chae Won-been as
• Park Hoon-jung

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‘The Witch: Part 2. The Other One’ Review – A Blood-Soaked Tribute To Akira

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Labeled as a South Korean mystery-action-horror film, The Witch 2: The Other is a sequel to 2018’s The Witch: Subversion, both of which explore a different spin on the concept of children being genetically-engineered to serve as weapons.

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Like the first film, The Other is written and directed by Park Hoon-jung (writer and director of The Tiger and New World, screenwriter of I Saw the Devil) and finds a world where said child-weapons are part of a top secret program known as the Witch Program.

Subjects who surviving the program are bestowed with super strength, super speed, telekinetic abilities, a healing factor, and the inability to die unless they’re shot in the head.

In Subversion, Kim Da-mi starred as Koo Ja-yoon, a young woman who escaped from one such facility to a farm where she was raised by her adopted parents.

Left with amnesia regarding her history and thought to be dead, Ja-yoon’s past comes flooding back when after revealing her special ability during a local singing contest, a group of four powerful Witches are sent to retrieve her.

The Other One instead follows a nameless girl believed to be on the same level as Ja-yoon, as portrayed by Shin Si-ah, who walks out of the Witch Program facility known as Ark after being show twice in the head.

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She is soon set upon by another group of powerful assassins, who attempt to retrieve her from the countryside home of Kyung-hee (Park Eun-bin) and Dae-Gil (Sung Yoo-bin), two siblings who have taken in the escaped Witch and are currently battling with their uncle over the rights to their recently deceased father’s land.

Taking a Kingsman-type approach to a film sequel, albeit with less of a time jump between films, The Other One offers the same bloody action and plays out in roughly a similar fashion as its predecessor, all the while revolving around a cast that is almost entirely new.

One notable aspect of The Other One is that its concept seems to be lifted directly from the pages of a comic book or the scenes of a superhero film, not only because the Witch Program is very similar to the likes of the Weapon X or the super-soldier experiments that created the Winter Soldier, but because the film is literally dripping in blood,

In Park Hoon-jung’s R-rated duology, appendages are blown and ripped off, everyone is shot and stabbed countless times to gruesome results, and people regularly cough up blood. The aftermath of an incident at a Witch Program facility typically finds dismantled bodies covering the floor and the walls painted from top to bottom with blood.

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To that end, the action in the film is also a bit different than what you might be used to.

Taking an approach that feels like it was lifted straight from an anime, most of The Other One’s action is fast paced, to the point where your eyes are really only able to process the beginnings and ends of fights rather than what happens in between them.

In regards to its visual effects and CGI, they’re mostly passable, giving their strongest showing when utilized to show a character using telekinesis or emphasize the overwhelming power and unbelievable damage of an opponent’s skills.

Still, the film’s special effects often leave characters and scenes seeming a bit more cartoonish and rubbery than the filmmakers probably intended, with the biggest culprit being the fight on top of the billboard near the fireworks display.

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Another of the film’s strengths is that while Subversion focused on a somewhat smaller scope, focusing mostly on assassins attempting to bring a single subject back to one particular lab for testing and brain removal, The Other One has far more of an open world feel to it.

Some of the strongest scenes in The Other One are when Shin Si-ah is just walking barefoot through the snow while being entirely covered in blood. She doesn’t speak much and all you hear is the crunching of snow beneath her feet and the chirping of birds.

The constant imagery of a blanket of cold, white show tainted by dark, red blood splatters provides a beautiful visual constrast that the The Other One utilizes to set its tones incredibly well.

However, what is notably absent from The Other One is the strong sense of character that coursed through the first film.

In Subversion, audiences went on an emotional journey with Ja-yoon, with her on-screen presence and chemistry with Choi Woo-shik’s Gwu Gong-Ja being a large part of what made the film so enjoyable.

(Admittedly, she does appear in the last 15 minutes of the film, and while it makes sense for her to have such reduced screen time given the title of the film, her noticeable absence is nevertheless disappointing.)

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By contrast, Shin Si-ah has very little to offer when it comes to dialogue, spending most of her story uttering short words or remaining completely silent.

Further, none of The Other One’s new characters are as memorable or as enthusiastic in their performances as any of their predecessors.

In fact, most of them are slightly annoying.

Jo-hyeon (Seo Eun-soo) and her partner (Justin John Harvey) add nothing to the film.

Meanwhile, Jang (Lee Jong-suk), Jo-hyeon’s former boss, does nothing but give the audience more questions than answers.

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Yet, what may be The Other One’s biggest issue is that while it does feel like a film set in the same ‘story’ as Subversion, it’s execution comparatively feels like it was done in the style of a disconnected spin-off.

While the film is obviously building towards a third and perhaps final film in the franchise – especially in light of its end credits sequence – The Other One lacks the emotional investment and satisfying pay-off Subversion did.

Overall, The Witch 2: The Other One is a mostly solid sequel that simply isn’t as good as its predecessor.

However, while Park fails to get you as invested in the film’s story this time around, he does continue to provide a refreshing take on the concept of superhumans with an emphasis on relentlessly violent action and a well-developed world.

So much so that it may actually pay off to watch The Other One before Subversion since the latter is more of a look at the ‘Witch’ version of Ja-yoon than the film she actually originated in.

Ultimately, Park Hoon-jung’s latest outing further supports the argument that, thanks to Park having developed his own intriguing franchise with similar concepts to the beloved anime, the world no longer needs a live-action version of Akira

The Witch 2: The Other One is now playing in select theaters across the country. The Witch: Subversion is available to rent through most online retailers for $2.99 or to purchase on DVD/Blu-ray .

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The Witch 2: The Other One Reviews

The thrill-packed finale and some surprising revelations certainly whet the appetite for part three.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 23, 2023

a series of effects-driven confrontations in which gravity is defied, in which wounds, even missing appendages, quickly heal, and in which immense, gory damage is done to the human(ish) body.

Full Review | Nov 29, 2022

The action itself is considerably more intense in terms of scope and spectacle - which most likely comes from not only a larger budget but the idea of making the protagonist a much more powerful entity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 28, 2022

Satire is much less the point than good old-fashioned ass-kicking and special effects, all smoothly executed and doled out in bite-size scenes.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2022

Fans of "Subversion" may find aspects of "The Other One" a step backward, the total narrative less engaging as the world barely glimpsed in "Subversion" blows wide open, but the possibilities for what’s to come will leave audiences clamoring for a Part 3.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 7, 2022

People don't have to see 2018's The Witch: Subversion before watching 2022's The Witch 2: The Other One, because this sci-fi action sequel is so incoherent, it won't make a difference. It's just an idiotic, violent chase movie with no suspense.

Full Review | Sep 5, 2022

Adding onto the story that riveted audiences with more comedy, booming action, and world expansion, The Witch 2: The Other One surpasses the first film in many ways. 

Full Review | Aug 1, 2022

...an awesome and totally unapologetic genre film that hits the bullseye over and over.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 1, 2022

"The Witch : Part 2. The Other One" is a great and quite unique for Korean cinema action film, and a movie that all fans of blockbusters will enjoy.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Jun 28, 2022

The Witch: Part 2. The Other One is a film that is extremely exciting for the action alone. While it’s a tad too long, especially for a fairly minimal story, the action is unyielding and pays off entirely...

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 28, 2022

Park’s outstanding skill lies in his ability to deliver this such that it ticks the supernatural boxes -- impossible speed, agility and strength -- yet still feels visceral.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 22, 2022

Overall, The Witch 2: The Other One is a mostly solid sequel that simply isn’t as good as its predecessor. It lacks the emotional investment and satisfying pay-off of The Witch: Subversion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 20, 2022

This is, ultimately, just another franchise picture, not aimed at adults so much as adolescents who can get into R-rated movies on their own. But it’s so much slicker, and so much more vigorous, than anything that any American studio is making.

Full Review | Jun 20, 2022

The Witch: Part 2. The Other One feels less satisfying than its predecessor. A small story with heavy exposition amounts for a less-effective variation of the original film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 17, 2022

I'm not sure where this particular wannabe franchise is going or if anybody but initiated viewers will care to find out, but I could watch another one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 17, 2022

Slick and well-executed enough, but plays empty and hollow and leaves zero impression.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jun 16, 2022

While the narrative may fare much weaker this round, Park Hoon-jung’s knack for strong visuals and staging, late-game revelations, and an epic climax make up for it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 16, 2022

‘The Witch 2: The Other One’ Review – Next Chapter in Violent Action-Horror Saga Gets Bloodier and More Complex

Park Hoon-jung ’s sci-fi action-horror  The Witch: Part 1: The Subversion , or  The Witch: Subversion , introduced a hyper-violent world of superpowered youth. It followed Ja-yoon ( Da-mi Kim ), an amnesiac teen who’d once fled a lab as a child and unlocked painful memories and supernatural abilities when the lab’s enforcers came to retrieve her.  Part 1  ended in a bloodbath and a fully reawakened Ja-yoon on a mission.  The Witch 2: The Other One  jumps ahead in the bloody saga, moving away from the secret lab and out into the world where a new superpowered girl gets discovered. It sparks a grim journey that leaves a bloody trail of corpses and an occasionally confounding narrative in her wake.

A girl ( Shin Sia ) wakes in a huge facility littered with dead bodies and pools of blood. The lone survivor, the blood-drenched Girl wanders into the nearby woods until she comes across a road, where she’s spotted and picked up by a passing van. The Girl realizes that the men inside intend to murder her to cover up their kidnapping of hostage Kyung-hee ( Park Eun-bin ). Their mistake. After a quick and ruthless dispatching, Kyung-hee gets the injured Girl help and brings her home. Kyung-hee has her own dangerous domestic woes to contend with, but it’s nothing compared to the mysteriously powerful Girl and the assassins tracking her.

The Other One  doesn’t offer the most accessible entry point into this chapter. Park Hoon-jung toggles between various scenes and characters to establish key players with such abruptness that it’s tough to get an initial sense of what’s happening. It doesn’t help that very little of it bears clear ties to the previous film. The speedy transitions relay that two different factions of lethal mercenaries are pursuing the Girl, and a third enters the equation in the form of Kyung-hee’s villainous uncle ( Jin Goo ). Enigmatic hints at overarching mythology, specifically with an opening scene that sets up the idea of clones and twins, further confounds when these concepts remain elusive and unexplored.

Once all the characters have been added to the board,  The Other One  settles into a more familiar story that parallels its predecessor. Like Ja-yoon, the central Girl bonds with caretaker Kyung-hee and her younger brother Dae-gil ( Sung Yoo-bin ) and feels protective of them. The Girl experiences normality for the first time, leading to a scant few moments of levity and an endearing interest in food.

But this is the second chapter in an ongoing saga and an action-horror one at that. Park Hoon-jung increases the violence, body count, and bloodletting for this sequel. The action sequences are intense, and the overall tone is grimmer. The gory action is where  The Other One  shines, and luckily the filmmaker rarely relents on that front.

The nonstop thrills mean a brisk pace for the robust runtime, even when the narrative retreads similar beats, but it also makes it a lot tougher to get a strong sense of character. Head agent Jo Hyun ( Seo Eun-soo ) has strong ties to a character from  Part 1 . Still, other than her established toughness and knack for slaying people like Girl, we know next to nothing about her save for her intentionally comedic dynamics with her partner ( Justin John Harvey ). Harvey demonstrates action chops, but line delivery across multiple languages can distract.

While the narrative may fare much weaker this round, Park Hoon-jung’s knack for strong visuals and staging, late-game revelations, and an epic climax make up for it. Curiously, one crucial piece of setup gets withheld until post-credits. But overall,  The Other One  does move the needle forward and opens up intriguing new possibilities for the third chapter. More importantly,  The Other One instills interest and deep curiosity to see where this insanely bloody, wild saga goes next.

The Witch 2: The Other One releases in theaters on June 17, 2022.

Horror journalist, RT Top Critic, and Critics Choice Association member. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon, SeriesFest, and Popcorn Frights Film Fest.

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The Witch Part 2: The Other One – Review

Jerri Wang and Amanda Sim | December 20, 2022

Image Credit: IMDb https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13721828/

As a sequel to an article we published last school year, we’re back with another review on the second movie! The Witch Part 2: The Other One is a continuation of the movie The Witch Part 1: The Subversion . The film was released on June 15, 202 as a thriller action, and was directed by Park Hoon-jung. It’s currently the fifth highest-grossing Korean film of 2022. It features famous actors and actresses such as Shin Si-ah, Park Eun-bin, Lee Jong-suk, and others. 

The Witch Part 2 is about a girl who wakes up in a secret laboratory as the only survivor. The girl meets Kyung-hee, who helps protect her from the gang that is after her. Only, when the gang finds her, they become overwhelmed by her unexpected powers, making us wonder, “Who is this mystery girl and why are the gangs after her?” 

We highly recommend you watch the first movie and read our review on it too! 

Jerri’s Commentary 

The Witch Part 2: The Other One focuses on a more international aspect of these laboratory experiments. In my honest opinion, the beginning of the movie is painfully slow (I fell asleep 30 minutes in). The main character is emotionless and overpowered, and most of the other countless characters had no depth, so watching was incredibly disengaging. The different languages felt forced, and the Mandarin pronunciation was… something. The real action happens approximately an hour and a half in, and since it’s night, you can’t really see anything. Everything happens so fast it’s a blur. At times, it felt like I was watching a scene from Twilight because the characters practically flew. Kim Da-mi’s short cameo at the end felt like the only real connection between the two movies. Overall, The Witch Part 2 may be okay as a standalone movie but fails to compare to the first. I personally didn’t like it, but if a third movie were to be released, I would probably watch it anyways. 

Amanda’s Commentary

Unlike the first movie which follows Goo Ja-yoon played by Kim Da-mi, The Witch Part 2 follows a different girl (played by Shin Si-ah) with similar powers as Goo Ja-yoon, only her name remains unknown to the watchers. Part 2 features an almost entirely different cast with a similar concept and story. While I’m not totally against a sequel featuring different cast members, unlike the characters in the first movie, the characters in the sequel lacked in personality; it felt like I was watching background characters, almost. Another interesting factor was that from the first movie, it could be concluded that these laboratories were stationed in Korea, but in the second movie it features those with similar powers from the Shanghai laboratory, alluding to the idea that these powers could possibly be in use worldwide. What I enjoyed about this movie was the interactions of the girl with Kyunghee and her brother as well as Goo Ja-yoon’s feature towards the end of the movie. What I didn’t like about the movie was the slow pacing. Despite it being around a 2 hour long movie, it really felt like more than 2 hours for me. There were scenes in the middle of the movie that I felt were almost unimportant and, honestly, I probably could’ve skipped because they were that irrelevant. Due to the way the story pans out, especially at the end of the movie, there could be a possibility for a Part 3 . Overall, the movie was good, but it wasn’t as great as the first movie. 

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The Witch Part 2: The Other One

Arriving a good four (long) years after Part 1 , The Witch Part 2 delivers another superior slice of sci-fi tinged action drama, that may be decisive for the direction it goes, but shows writer/director Park Hoon-jung is determined to stick to his own rhythm and style for the franchise.

Instead of picking up where Part 1 let off, Part 2 focuses on another survivor of the fantastical experiments performed by the shady corporation that gave the lead in Part 1 (Kim Da-Mi) her superpowers. Said girl (Cynthia) emerges bloodied from another lab that has been “cleaned out” by a mysterious group of super powered mercenaries, seemingly on a mission to eradicate all the labs creating these “witches.” Said girl is taken in by the kindly Kyung-hee (Park Eun-bin), the girl rescuing her from some local thugs who are after her farm and land. Kyung-hee and her younger brother take the girl under their protective wing as she begins to experience the world outside of the lab. However, said superpowered mercenaries are soon made aware of her escape and are dispatched to retrieve her, along with another group of other superpowered youngsters (like the ones seen in Part 1 ) who are also out to kill the recently escaped girl.

It’s a similar set-up to Part 1 but with a different protagonist, one who may be even more powerful than all previous subjects, and while it feels like it’s treading too familiar ground Park Hoon-jung actually crafts an even darker and more action-packed tale of X-Men powered youngsters. Part 1 had a slow burn build up to all the super powered action and while this instalment doesn’t dive straight into it, it certainly get’s too it faster and delivers a surfeit of supercharged action scenes. Mixing high-impact choreography and CGI (some of which is a little wonky and will upset those who get very angry at less than stellar CGI!), the action hits hard and is satisfyingly brutal and crunchy. It all builds to an epic showdown set on a farm, that almost tops the lab set siege finale of the original.

Park Hoon-jung certainly knows how to craft action but he also imbues the film with a dark tone, slow build tension, and a subtly cool vibe that contributes to the atmosphere and world building. However, the film can’t quite get away from a narrative that confuses as much as it entertains, and some may be disappointed it doesn’t continue the exact story from Part 1 : instead telling another story set within the same world. Part 1’s star Kim Da-Mi does appear here but is not the main focus and the throwbacks and the few scenes that do feature characters and plot points from Part 1 are brief or dropped in rather haphazardly meaning those who haven’t seen the previous film may be confused. There are also some attempts at levity occasionally at odds with the dark nature of proceedings that while welcome don’t always land.

While The Witch franchise may be at odds with the rest of Park Hoon-jung’s resume (he scripted I Saw the Devil and wrote/directed the superb gangster epic, New World ) it’s certainly got his style stamped all over it. Some who loved Part 1 may be disappointed by the direction this instalment goes in but this two-bit reviewer who loved Part 1 found this to be a great continuation and an even bloodier more action-soaked instalment. Roll on Part 3 .

Signature Entertainment will release The Witch: Part 2 on Digital Platforms 28th November 2022.

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