Decibel (2022) Review

For anyone who has a claustrophobia, submarines might not be for you or at least that’s what I think. Being inside a submarine looks pretty terrifying and suffocating. Even more so, the one specializing in warfare. There are quite a few submarine tragedies happening all over the world and there’s a movie from South Korea, Decibel, though not related to any submarine warfare tragedy, was attempting to portray a trolley problem. When there’s a life threatening situation, ethically who would you save? This movie was released back in 2022 with a well-known South Korean actor, Kim Rae-Won, who won numerous awards for Best Actors in South Korea. With him being in this film and another popular actor Lee Jong-Suk, the expectation that I have is quite big on this film. Anyhow, without further adieu let me dive into it and share my reviews on it!

In the water near Guam, a warfare submarine from South Korea ROKS Halla just returned from a RIMPAC exercise. The South Korean team was doing well and the scene shifted to a situation inside the submarine when an officer Tae-Ryong was listening to his friend gossiping about their chief in command, Kang Do-Young (Kim Rae-Won). Overhearing the conversation, Do Young wakes up from his bed and asks them to make Ramen for them. While going to the common room, everyone surprised Do Young with a little celebration from his accomplishment during the RIMPAC exercise. He also received a gift from Tae-Ryong, who has a brother Jeon Tae-Sung(Lee Jong-Suk) who also works inside the submarine. The joyful situation inside the submarine turns into a tense when the submarine passes a hidden torpedo that was targeting their submarine. They eventually lost contact and people have thought that the submarine may have sunk and everyone aboard died. But the scene shifted to a year later when Do-Young was hailed as a hero and was giving a speech about his experience and as one of the people who survived the submarine tragedy. However, after the speech, he received a call from an unknown number who asked him, “ which one should I blow first?”. Then, another survivor, Lieutenant Kim Yoo-Taek received an anonymous package containing a bomb and it exploded. As Do-young visited another survivor who told him that Tae-Ryong wanted to kill people but Do-Young mentioned that Tae-Ryong is dead. While on the way back he received another call that asked him to stay on the line and follow all his wishes or otherwise, there would be more casualties. Trying to grasp everything he eventually remembered the problem that he had while being inside the submarine with another 44 crews.

This movie was quite a nail biter that if you’re not too attentive, you sort of miss all the crews and the possible antagonist of the movie. The antagonist and its motive thought was hinted a few times unveiled pretty slowly that makes it even more suspenseful. In my opinion, it was able to create suspense even from the get-go when the submarine scene was the start, which was mostly deep underwater and was pretty dark. As I was watching how it went dark inside a shipwreck, I thought nobody would really survive but considering almost half of the crew survived, that probably takes quite a difficult decision to do so. The title itself is later revealed in the movie that it was related to the bomb. And to be honest, it took me a few weeks before I even wanted to check it out. I am honestly not a fan of Kim Rae-Won as a lot of his movies are mostly pretty heavy and have quite heavy themes like LUCA for example. But even in this movie, he didn’t disappoint as an actor. He did really well and could make us feel like he truly cared about his crew members and he was just a human with its flaws. The storyline itself has a few loopholes that I think the movie deserves a few explanations and even a longer running time.

This suspenseful movie might not be for everyone but if you’re looking for something interesting to watch, I do recommend it. However I would only give this 5.5 out of 10 which means, you can save your time instead of watching this unless you have no other options. I feel like because of the loopholes of the movie and the conclusion that wasn’t really too satisfying, It only deserves that much of my rating.