Bloody Reunion (aka To Sir, with Love, My Teacher or Teacher's Mercy) is a 2006 South Korean horror film, and the feature film debut of director Im Dae-Woong.
Mrs. Park is a former elementary school teacher, who is in poor health and confined to a wheelchair, cared for by one of her ex-students, Nam Mi-Ja. Mi-Ja invites some of her old classmates to a (bloody) reunion in order to try and cheer Mrs. Park up. However, one by one the classmates are brutally murdered by a killer who covers her/his features with a handmade rabbit mask. Only Mrs Park and Mi-Ja survive the reunion, and Mi-Ja informs the Police that the murderer is Mrs Park’s deformed son, Young-min, who was forced to wear a rabbit mask to cover up his facial deformity by his mother and kept caged in the basement. But is she telling the truth? And why is she the only student to survive?
Tropes
- Accidental Murder: While attempting to stop Sun-Hee from pushing Mrs. Park's wheelchair over a cliff, Mi-Ja winds up accidentally pushing Sun-Hee over the edge to her death.
- Batter Up!: The killer takes to Dal-Bong's head with a baseball bat after first chaining him to the wall.
- Career-Ending Injury: Dal-Bong used to be the most athletic boy in school. After he came last in a relay, Ms. Park slapped him and made him spend a day doing squats, which later caused him to permanently injure his knee when playing soccer the next day.
- Chairman of the Brawl: During the fight in the basement, Myung-Ho tries to smash a chair onto Jung-Wa's head, but he manages to roll out of the way.
- Downer Ending: After the film's true events play out, Jung-Wo is revealed to have wheeled Ms. Park to the edge of a dock. Then, she gives an agonizingly heartbreaking recap of all the horrible things she went through as a child and how Ms. Park's treatment of her traumatized her for life. Then, she kills herself by jumping off the pier as Ms. Park falls out of her chair in agony. The film ends with a shot of her empty wheelchair, implying that she truly felt guilty and took her own life as well. Yeah...
- Driven to Suicide: The shame and stress of having a physically deformed son drive Mrs. Park's husband to commit suicide: hanging himself in front of the boy.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The film ends when we find out that the narrator is the murderer, and she made up the entire story, and all the bad things in the flashbacks actually happened to her, not the other guests.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Discounting the prologue, the main events of the film take about 48 hours. (The final scene takes place an undetermined time later, but probably no more than a few days.)
- Eye Scream: The killer kills Myung-ho by driving their thumbs through his eyes.
- Final Girl: Mi-Ja is the only one of the students to survive the reunion.
- First Period Panic: The incident where Jung-wo was humiliated for supposedly soiling herself in class was actually her first period starting (if the Unreliable Narrator is to be believed).
- Formerly Fat: Sun-Hee was once obese and teased by Ms. Park but then became skinny and obsessed with her appearance and weight.
- Gasoline Dousing: Myung-Ho douses Mrs Park in gasoline just before he attempts to immolate her.
- Harmful to Minors: In the prologue to Bloody Reunion, it is revealed that Mrs. Park's husband hanged himself in front of their deformed son.
- In Vino Veritas: Se-Ho is the former class president who was close to Eun-Young. Ms. Park bullied him for being poor. He is the first to tell Ms. Park how he feels in a drunken rage.
- Look Both Ways: Jong-Wo's mother was hit by a car when she stormed off across the road with Jong-Wa's soiled underpants.
- Madwoman in the Attic: Mrs Park kept her deformed son locked up in the basement of her house.
- My New Gift Is Lame: Eun-Young was the class vice president whose family was said to be poor. As a present for Teachers Day, she made Ms. Park a card that said "I love you Ms. Park". Ms. Park then ridiculed her in front of the entire class.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: The one thing that all of his former classmates remember about Jung-Wo is that he is the boy who soiled himself in class.
- Potty Failure: Jung-Wo suffered endless humiliation after soiling himself in class.
- Reunion Revenge: Former elementary school classmates and their teacher meet sixteen years later at her countryside cottage for a class reunion. The happy gathering turns into a nightmare as old grudges and hidden truths surface and one by one friends vanish in a series of grisly murders.
- Reusable Lighter Toss: After dousing Mrs. Park in gasoline, Myung-Ho is about to immolate her by tossing his Zippo on her when he's tackled by the killer.
- The Reveal: There never was a killer in a bunny mask, because a man named Jung-Wo did not exist. Jung-Wo was Mi-Ja's real name, and she was in fact the murderer - the mask was just a decoration in her home, the victims were poisoned before being sliced, and everything that happened to them was actually inflicted on her.
- Sadist Teacher: The flashbacks reveal that Mrs. Park was a sadist teacher who enjoyed tormenting and humiliating her students, supposedly to make them strive to improve themselves. However, the ending reveals that these 'flashbacks' are an invention of the killer, and that all of the bad things that Mrs. Park is supposed to have done to the other students actually happened to her.
- Shovel Strike: Myung-Ho knocks Mi-Ja out by hitting her in the head with a shovel before he drags Mrs Park into the basement and attempts to set her on fire.
- Spinning Clock Hands: Used to show time passing as Mi-Ga and Detective Ma wait for Mrs. Park to wake up at the hospital.
- Suicide by Sea: Jung-Wo commits suicide by walking off the end of a pier into the ocean.
- Sunglasses at Night: Sun-Hee wears her sunglasses constantly, even at night, to hide the stitches from a recent eye operation.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: One of the final revelations Detective Ma receives is that the victims of the massacre had all been poisoned before their bodies were mutilated. When he returns to the scene of the crime, he discovers that the cake Mi-Ja served everyone had been poisoned.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Myung-Ho was a boy who was always favored by Mrs. Park. It is hinted that she made sexual contact with him which has left him scarred for life.
