Chapter 153
Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 153
Chapter Title: Desire and Lack
‘Paranormal’ Episode 11, Second Half.
The village, quiet for a time, began to grow noisy.
It was because a gruesomely shredded corpse had been found on the mountain near the village.
The crime scene.
Sheriff Clinton, nursing a headache as he pinched the bridge of his nose, held a radio. Deputy Candle was busy setting up a police line around the scene.
- Candle, what the hell happened?
- Oh, Father...?
Deputy Candle gave a troubled look toward Father Brian, who had arrived at the scene with the Morgan sisters.
- If they're villagers, they're my parishioners. Just tell me who it is.
Candle glanced furtively at the sheriff before whispering softly.
- ...Father. The damage is severe, but it doesn't look like a villager.
- I see... Understood.
Catherine approached Father Brian as he turned back, unable to get closer.
- Brian.
Catherine's face, looking up at him, was rigidly set in grave concern.
- I found traces. Ones reeking of a foul stench...
At the tremor in her voice,
Brian's face hardened as well.
Leaving the crime scene behind, the group slowly tracked the traces, with Catherine leading the way.
Clear claw marks remained in the still-soft mud, likely from the rain the night before.
Nail gouges freshly carved into a massive tree.
What Catherine had found made it abundantly clear.
Someone now lay cold at that crime scene, having been chased down this path by a lycanthrope—and meeting a brutal end there.
But the puzzling part was why a chase would unfold on such a remote mountain trail.
In a place with no proper path cleared.
- What on earth could be out here in the middle of nowhere...?
And her question was soon answered.
- It's a cave.
- Hm...
The pitch-black mouth of the cave, too dark to see inside, seemed to evoke an inexplicable terror just by looking at it.
Catherine cautiously approached the entrance.
- Air's flowing through, so it's not sealed off. Hm...
She meticulously inspected the cave mouth.
And then,
she straightened up and turned to the group.
- The inside isn't soaked with rainwater, so the thing hasn't come back. But...
Catherine continued, her face puzzled.
- Looks like there was more than one victim. There are bloodstains instead of rainwater—leading further in.
Korea University Department of Film, Shin Ji-hye.
While preparing an assignment for Professor Kim Hong-jin's class, she tilted her head back toward the ceiling.
“Haaa...”
A deep sigh escaped from her stifled frustration.
“How on earth can he make an expression like that?”
Ever since ‘Paranormal’ Episode 11 had aired,
Shin Ji-hye had been practicing, trying to mimic the expression Father Brian showed at the cave.
The group, despite their fear, resolved to enter the cave.
They decided Jennifer would stay at the entrance to continue investigating while Brian and Catherine went inside.
Catherine took the first step into the cave.
But right before Brian entered,
the camera—which had only shown Catherine's back—swung around for some reason, lighting up Brian's face from the front.
As always, ‘Brian’ wasn't one for dramatic shifts in expression.
Yet viewers of ‘Paranormal’ all agreed they loved seeing his varied sides.
Even in minute changes, you could glimpse a range of emotions on his face.
Tiny details.
The subtle variations added to his otherwise stoic face—small though they were—were conveyed sharply and clearly to the audience.
It was acting on a truly astonishing level.
“He definitely added another variation here, but I can't figure out what it means...”
Jung Woo-jin, playing Brian right before entering the cave, had shown yet another nuance in expression. But it was such a fleeting moment that she couldn't grasp its meaning.
“Uwaaa—!”
Shin Ji-hye vented her frustration like a stretch,
when
*Ding.*
Her smartphone chimed with a notification.
“Ah!”
Delighted, she hurriedly picked up her phone. What appeared was a notification: a new video uploaded to ‘Kim Hong-jin’s Movie Readings.’
- New video from ‘Kim Hong-jin’s Movie Readings’: [Review/Spoilers] They say acting stems from experience. (‘Paranormal’ Episode 11 Review.)
It felt a bit like cheating on the assignment,
but
“I've tried enough on my own, right...?”
Quickly compromising with herself, Shin Ji-hye lay back on her bed and hit play.
- Hello, this is Kim Hong-jin. Today, I'd like to briefly discuss the content from the second half of ‘Paranormal’ Episode 11. This may contain spoilers, so if you haven't watched it yet, please stop the video now.
He'd always been a good speaker, but now he seemed even more laid-back, almost like a YouTuber?
- Alright, that's plenty of time to stop. Let's get started. Actually, what I want to talk about with you today isn't the first half of Episode 11—it's solely the cave scene in the second half.
Professor Kim Hong-jin was increasingly taking on YouTuber traits.
- In Stanislavski's ‘System’ acting training, there's something called ‘Emotional Memory.’ The core is that actors draw on their own experiences and memories to immerse themselves in a role—
Konstantin Stanislavski.
A name anyone studying acting had surely heard at least once.
A Russian actor and director, he devised the ‘System’ theory—the foundation of modern ‘Method Acting.’
“Experience and memory...”
- The acting of a character in a play ultimately occurs within the scope of the actor's personal experiences as a human being—and the emotions arising from those experiences.
Actors with diverse experiences can portray richer emotions.
- To breathe life into a role, actors recall the most similar experiences and memories, or if none exist, they piece together fragments from analogous ones—
As Professor Kim Hong-jin said,
Shin Ji-hye had worked hard to accumulate varied experiences to become a better actor.
When direct experience was hard, she'd sought indirect ones—visiting real-life sites to hear stories or renting videos from the library to study.
- That's why last year, actress Jung Soo-hong's performance, rising from painful memories, shattered the nation's hearts and reminded us of family's value. Experience is crucial for actors. But it's not something you can just acquire at will. It takes inevitable time... That's why expanding one's acting spectrum is so difficult—
Professor Kim Hong-jin, mid-sentence, paused.
- Lately, watching actor Jung Woo-jin's performances, I've wondered if that's really true. He's still young, and less than a year since debuting properly as a rookie. Yet looking at the roles he's tackled in that short time.
Behind the professor's face—seemingly pondering how to phrase it—clips of Jung Woo-jin's roles played in sequence.
A sociopath killer with chilling pure malice, a bureau chief clumsily expressing warm pure love, a man showing a Casanova facade while conveying inner emptiness.
And finally, ‘Father Brian,’ whose past kept intriguing everyone.
- His acting spectrum is astonishingly broad. And the reason I made this video? This scene. Let's watch in slow motion.
Brian standing before the cave mouth, like a black hole.
A crack appears in his ever-steady expression.
A scene that would normally flash by was slowed and edited by Professor Kim Hong-jin, illuminating Brian's face for about five seconds.
Facial muscles twitched in minute, ceaseless variations—like spasms.
To an almost eerie degree.
“Wh-what...”
Shin Ji-hye clamped her hand over her gaping mouth in shock.
After endless repetitions trying to imitate it, she finally understood why she couldn't.
- It passes quickly in the drama, but slowed down like this... Suppressed anger, fear, anxiety, frustration, gloom, loneliness, melancholy. Every negative emotion seems to emanate from his face.
How he layered such vivid, rapid changes without seeming comical.
Why it felt so natural on screen.
It defied Shin Ji-hye's common sense.
- When shaping a character, the most important thing is first establishing what ‘desire’ and ‘lack’ they possess. That gives them life and sparks our curiosity.
Excited like Shin Ji-hye, Professor Kim Hong-jin's words sped up slightly.
- Why is the whole world obsessed with the character ‘Brian’? Incredibly handsome looks? Yes. Flawless acting? Absolutely. But we don't stop at admiration—we keep digging deeper.
“......”
He was right.
- Why that expression? What does it hint at? How did an ordinary priest become a hunter? What was his turbulent past like?
As someone seeing such posts daily on communities, Shin Ji-hye couldn't help but agree.
The drama itself didn't throw much bait about ‘Brian.’ No backstory spotlight, no daily life glimpses.
All they saw was Father Brian fighting alongside the Morgan sisters.
Yet people endlessly wondered and questioned him.
- I believe it's because actor Jung Woo-jin constantly drops hints about ‘Brian's’ lacks and desires. So naturally that most don't even notice.
“Conveying it through acting alone, without a single line...”
- ...Trauma, or PTSD. One treatment method is drama therapy. A few years ago, participating in research on treating trauma through theater, I met people with various traumas... And watching that scene earlier, it felt like Brian was telling me.
Pausing briefly, Professor Kim Hong-jin murmured softly.
- That he carries a horrific trauma.