This film affirmed three of my views: 1) Retail is not a joke, 2) convenience stores are the setting for some of the most interesting stories, and 3) capitalism is detestable. As someone who frequents convenience stores and has incorporated these visits into my daily life, and as a daughter of two merchants who own a sari-sari store, I was greatly interested in the project of this movie and its commendable execution.

Simply put, this film depicted vignettes of experiences of employees that work or have worked in this one convenience store. They are divided by shots of time as told by a wall clock, but we do not know how many years pass between the terms of these employees or the duration between their individual stories. I found this type of narrative unique in that it does not require any change in location and it does not have a straightforward chronological flow, but it was still able to impart a cohesive message.

Even though this strategy could make processing the film difficult for those who want to connect these stories or decipher the common thread among them, I personally enjoyed just absorbing each unique perspective that each character had to offer, no matter how light or how profound. They all contribute to the film’s unique exploration of the nature of convenience stores: here is a place where people from all walks of life come in to acquire basic goods on the go, but from the perspective of the people who provide these goods to them. Thus, the film allows us to look into these employees’ lives as well. We see a young gay woman coping with heartbreak, a young man making music on his laptop, a man trying to learn English during slow work hours and unintentionally offending customers when he tries to apply what he learned, and a young adult who’s already broke and unfortunately also gets fired from her job at the convenience store because of a surprise inspection by a member of the head branch, among others. They all provide a plethora of nuances to the kind of life these type of part-time workers live and the impact of their encounters with customers.

I liked this way of storytelling because it reveals the other, perhaps darker side of convenient stores. Convenient stores are typically brightly lit and vibrant because of their 24/7 open hours and the array of products that they have, but their walls see everything in the range of human emotion, even those that are not as bright and vibrant as their location. These stores witness not just happiness and humor, but also feelings like (in this movie’s case) fear of the mysterious and/or the supernatural. Sadness and grief can also be evoked in this type of setting, as can be seen in the characters who experience dejection and desperation.

In that regard, I definitely did not see the ending of this film coming, but I wasn’t surprised, either. The ending goes to show that the stores that are regarded as convenient by costumers are in truth less than convenient and even detrimental to the workers of these stores themselves. In providing us convenience, they sacrifice their own dignity, and capitalism forces them to do so. The maintenance of these stores is often done by just one to two people, and they are expected to be consistent but receive minimal compensation for it. I was both angry and sad at the ending of the movie, because it reveals how convenience stores can be a microcosm for the larger economic practices that disadvantage and oppress workers, making them “futureless things,” as the movie suggests. Thus begs the question: how does convenience contribute to the future of humanity?

While I normally prefer not to judge films by their titles, Futureless Things seemed to give my mind an image of something dark or dystopian. While the first few chapters of the film seemed to reject my initial impression based on the title, the final portion does add to this darkness that the theme was apparently [and seemingly] trying to portray throughout the film.
For the most part, despite the film being set in Korea and away from a culture that I’m more aware of [like the Philippines and even western, at least based on films and the cultures I’ve encountered through them], the setting of a convenience store seemed to give off a more global culture. Even the scene involving the North Korean woman seemed familiar given how people really discriminate those of different background.
Despite the ease of understanding the general context of the film due to the relatively global culture provided by a convenience store, the lack of background context per story/chapter was a bit frustrating. This was most apparent during the first shift from the beginning to the second chapter; the lack of a context of how and who those characters were and then being immediately forgotten upon the entry of the new character and scenario was bit difficult to overcome in the beginning. Though throughout the film, I found myself more prepared to transition from one story to the other, and open to the idea that these were truly independent stories and needed not one another.
This episodal treatment of the movie was definitely the most interesting aspect of it. While we were made aware that there have been movies made similarly to this, I have personally never encountered one. Additionally, the clock being seemingly a motif provided points of reflection for me; for me, this clock brings me back to thinking about the title being Futureless Things, a title that relates itself to time. Despite my obsession with “time” in the film, I didn’t really find anything to relate all scenes to “time” and instead just ended up concluding that the only things that all the scenes share are the setting and consequently, the owner of the convenience store.
Often, we read, hear, and see stories and are often only exposed to parts that are supplemental to the overall conclusion or climax. In this film though, we encounter a lot of, if not all, chapters that do not really add up to the conclusion. I initially thought that all the characters/employees were incompetent that then resulted into the poor financial performance the store was having, but looking back, some of the employees seemed decent and were only bothered by external forces as opposed to their own faults. These were scenes and moments that did not seem to add up to a central plot, and perhaps a number would argue that there really is no central plot. The closest to something central in the film would be the conclusion and how the owner of the store, and again these seemingly unrelated or barely related chapters being separated from the conclusion made the film a complicated but also interesting watch.
The director challenges the usual storytelling we encounter every day. We see chapters that do not give us background context and true conclusions that make it very different from stories that rely heavily on such background context or conclusions. The movie even strays farther away from conventional films like this by including realistic scenarios but also mixing in supernatural scenarios such as the one with the DJ store clerk and the mysterious woman. The film’s approach of being seemingly lighthearted at first while seemingly address the horrific capitalistic climax was not new, but how the film was shown through the various stories that did not contribute largely to the conclusion but still left the viewers engaged and anticipating for the conclusion was something new.

Futureless Things (2014) started off as what seemed to be a slice of life movie that was centered on the conversations held in this enclosed setting. What I thought to be a light-hearted film turned into yet another version of Schizopolis (1996) with the incorporation of a cardboard box that captured one of the employees and an out-of-place dance number at the end as the true cherry on top for another mind-boggling movie.

Similar to my experience watching Schizopolis, I got so excited over the slight chance of me finally understanding the movie, but the next scenes proved that maybe I didn’t get it after all. When the first set of people with succeeding shifts started reiterating lines from the previous one, I thought this was the pattern I had to look out for to understand the movie. It may have been the string that stitched all of these unique stories together; one that would lead everything to a greater goal or end. I was unsure if I should perceive the stories in a particular sequence in relation to previous ones or treat each new shift as as fresh start. While there were elements that carried over to the next shifts, they were still never enough to completely comprehend the direction this story was taking.

If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s how the setting was the perfect choice to hold such bizarre interactions. It was interesting to see what the director and writers decided to do with the confined space. The convenience store was small enough to make interaction, and even eavesdropping, unavoidable. It’s also not that busy of a store so anything that anyone coming in does is seen by the employee stationed at the register. Both the camera and the cashier followed the customers around the store because they pretty much had nothing better to do (that is, unless they were painting their nails or learning a new language) and could not lead their attention elsewhere. You’d think a setting like this could only do so much with its little moving parts and extremely limited number of objects either the customers or employees could interact with. Oddly enough, I imagined it to be like a Sims game and thought what possible options could be given to the player in a store like this; it wouldn’t be a lot. This thought traces back to how I saw a convenience store job to be pretty “mechanical” in nature where there’s not a lot to it besides people doing it for a wage. The employees were obviously constrained by the rules set by the store manager so they couldn’t do anything too out of the ordinary. In my own experience, convenience store workers seemed pretty detached from their work; they simply go to work to get paid and leave it at that. Some develop bonds with coworkers, but other than that, convenience stores seem to be a void of anything exciting. That’s especially true if we compare it to other establishments like restaurants, arcades, cafès, and even clothing stores where [usually] more interaction between clerks and customers happen. It was pretty clear that the creators of this movie saw that characteristic of convenience stores and played around with it as they heightened action in various scenes and mixed in fictitious details to keep it a bit more exciting. A store of this kind doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unlike an office or a classroom, the atmosphere is a bit more relaxed and flexible. It’s why some employees slack off too much and rake in even more debt for the store. It’s also open to anyone and everyone, so there’s that aspect of uncertainty as to what kind of story will be introduced and to what extent it will be told and expounded on.

Convenience stores are a place where people generally don’t stay too long in. They come in with purchasing something in mind and leave at once to do other things. This kind of fact from reality was able to come into play in the story’s main gimmick as it was able to host multiple stories with people coming in and out of the store. There was always variety in the conversation topics with each new customer and that paired with a new personality manning the cashier made for even more unique interactions. Because no single character stayed too long in the store, the viewer cannot fully attach themselves to anyone. Character development is very limited; we can only assume what the people are really like with their brief replies, actions, and reactions. The only thing constant was the store itself. I guess it’s why I felt a great deal of grief when the store was robbed and everything was disheveled. Despite not being able to explore any character in great depth, I was still able to empathize with the man that was scanning all the items post-robbery. He was ridden with too many problems, most of which were because of the store and its employees, and it all just came crashing down on him towards the end to the point that he killed himself. It was heart-wrenching to see the store the way that it was in that scene after the viewers were shown all of these stories that took place in that same space. Although, these emotions were short-lived because one valid interpretation of this whole sequence was that it was all dreamt by the last employee.

The last scene spiralled back to the very first scene with the two students dropping by the convenience store, imitating how the clock just circles around with no definite end. In that way, there was no real future to be seen, hence, futureless. I’d say this movie explored job alienation and the senseless passage of time that comes with it. It is laudable how the creators of the movie turned having a mechanical job like manning the cashier of a convenience store into a story (or stories) worth telling. It was refreshing to look into the daily interactions that happen in a convenience store because they’re one of the many interactions we don’t necessarily think about. We go in convenience stores not really feeling the need to interact with the cashier or anyone else in the store for either a long period of time or in great depth, but this movie gave us the opportunity to spend more time thinking about these exchanges—for what they are and for all their absurdities. Obviously, there were instances that were too out of the ordinary to happen in one’s local convenience store, but it’s not that impossible if you really think about it. Having one’s soul captured by a box would be one of those things, but with little witnesses, who knows what really happens at convenience stores! Most interactions in this space are, for the most part, brief and shallow so while they do establish a quick connection from person to person, it’s all just something that will be brushed off within the next minute or so. It’s a cycle of nothingness. This is not to say that the people’s lives and stories were nothing, but they were told in a space where it didn’t really matter. This thought was taken to the extreme towards the end where the guy labelled the employee that hung himself with “seized property”. The man had problems of his own, but with his story being set in a commercial establishment, his humanity and his problems were ignored; he was treated like a now-worthless commodity.

Through all of this, I still wouldn’t put this movie in my favorites, but it is definitely a movie worth talking about. It has a lot of elements that left me pondering for weeks, and like most of the movies we’ve watched in this class, I don’t think I’ll ever get to understand it fully. At the end of the day, it did make for both a great experience and a mind exercise that forced me to reflect on alienation and our mindless daily interactions (whether it was what the creators intended or otherwise).

Futureless Things was nothing short of quirky and absurd. It’s the kind of film where the elements are so clearly delineated from one another, so it’s easy to pick apart. Despite this, it’s also one of the only films I know that’s easy to unpack, but difficult to piece back together. The film has so many things you can work with, but at the same time, there are so many ways you can connect everything together, and so many ways you can interpret the film. Here’s my take:

The film first presents itself like any regular film, with an established setting, established characters, and a seemingly regular narrative that we think we can keep up with. I can’t speak for everybody who’s seen the film, but I expected I’d be following the same two characters throughout the rest of the film. When the film jumped to the next set of characters, I got a bit unsettled. I then realized it’s not the characters that we had to follow throughout the film, and then I think that maybe there’s a recurring theme we’re supposed to get as the film progresses.

Employees go in and out of the store during their shifts, and because the film switches from character to character so often, the events seem to present themselves in several vignettes. The genres of the vignettes and the storylines vary drastically—you have your standard romantic subplots between employees (of the same gender!), you witness discrimination and harassment towards people of different nationalities, you have this strange and fantastical subplot where characters have odd supernatural abilities, and you have this subplot where things take an unexpected dark, morbid turn.

Because the film seems to initially present these subplots as separate, my brain wired myself to take everything in as such. However, bits and pieces started presenting themselves in the different vignettes that allude to previous vignettes. We get a sneak peek of the lesbian subplot before it is presented to us in full, and we later see certain scenes being replayed from the perspective of surveillance cameras. Audio recordings from when one employee was trying to learn English are replayed in a later vignette, and everything ends with a singular employee laying out the IDs of all the employees that were featured throughout the film. These references left me with more questions, which admittedly inconvenienced me for a bit, as I tried to rack my brain for what these could all possibly mean. Until now, I still don’t really know what they’re supposed to mean. I didn’t realize I was going to come out of the film with so many things I was unsure of.

Later on, we realize the only constant thing throughout the film is the convenience store, and the fact that everything takes place within that store was the only thing I was sure of. The film thoroughly plays around with the concept of space, and how all the events, relationships, and conflicts that came out of the movie all point back to that same space. This may drive audiences to think, how differently would the story have turned out if it weren’t set in a convenience store? What if it were set in a slightly bigger but similar setting, like a grocery store? Would it have been less intimate? Or what if it was a different store altogether? What if it were your average retail store that sold clothes, or maybe a bookstore? If it were a comic book store, would employees encounter pretentious smartasses more often? If it were a sex shop, would the employees be more prone to getting harassed by customers? The possibilities are endless.

I think the main selling factor of Futureless Things is its capacity to spark meaningful conversation, all the while remaining a very entertaining film. Although I’m left with a lot of questions that were left unanswered, I figure it might be the kind of film I need to re-watch over and over until I finally get it. Or maybe it’s one of those films that I’ll never fully understand, no matter how many times I watch it. Despite everything, I could say Futureless Things comfortably unsettled me—it left me with many things that were left unresolved, but I think that’s exactly where its merits lie.

Futureless Things is somewhat a confusing film. Every storyline seems to have a structure in it, but when they’re put together there doesn’t seem to be much coherence in it. Themes also seem to vary from skit to skit, from romance moving onto comedy onto political commentary onto comedy again, and so on. This technique has worked in some films I’ve watched, but this doesn’t seem to make a full impact for me.

The lone common theme I could think of when it comes to these storylines would be the commentary it has on consumerism and ones who are affected by it. With the setting primarily being a convenience store, we are introduced into the inner workings of it and how the different players included would interact with each other. Clerks would have interaction with each other, with customers and with their boss, Mr. Chun. It was refreshing to see a film made particularly in this setting, as I was able to catch a glimpse into what these people behind the counter might actually be going through. Clerks might be balancing this with a bigger dream such as acting, they might just be getting by in an unfamiliar place such as the North Korean was, or they could be looking for something to help them survive.

Their storylines aren’t given proper conclusions though, as they seem to abruptly end just as they start getting interesting (apart from the two couples at the beginning). Mr. Chun would seem to be the only mainstay character as we see him in multiple skits throughout the film. His storyline would also be the one given a proper conclusion as we see in the last scene. Perhaps this would be a commentary on the fates of store owners such as him, who do have to put up with multiple personalities and people with different motivations such as his part-time workers, while at the same time, trying to feed his family. It’s a difficult task, to say the least, but it’s what business owners have to put up with.

He would let this get the best of him, as consumerism and making ends meet would prove to be too much. As he is berated by the head branch and by his unpaid workers, he thinks of suicide as the only escape out of it. The last few scenes would prove to be the most impactful for me, as corporate greed is given a spotlight. With the permits put on different parts of the looted convenience store, and even on the hanging corpse of Mr. Chun, a lot can be interpreted. It left me with a lot of questions about what really goes in behind the counter, especially in a place which a lot of people, including me, take for granted.

With the different faces I saw behind the counter of the AK24 convenience store, it reminds me as well to see the faces of the 7-Elevens and the Ministops that I would visit. These people aren’t things which I take advantage of, they’re people as well who are living just like me, just finding ways to thrive and survive.

Ever wonder what convenience store clerks do all day? No? Me neither – not until I came across Futureless Things. Starring Korea’s best, this film revolves around the different kind of people store clerks encounter in a span of a few hours. Through this film, director Kim Kyung-Mook scratches the surface and goes beneath it to transform these simple convenience store stories into something greater.

At first, I was excited for we were finally going to watch a light-hearted film. I guess I paid little attention to the title and focused more on what the first few scenes brought to the table – light and cool color grading, soft classical scores, and a budding romance between two couples. Little did I know, everything was to slowly go downhill after Seong-joon, another regular store clerk, disappears into a cardboard box given to him by a mysterious, and possibly, supernatural woman.

This is when I realized that Futureless Things does not only focus on one genre, but multiple. These being thriller, comedy, romance, drama, and even fantasy. Even better, this film was able to portray all these different genres in such an odd setting – a convenience store. It is not common for films to shoot in a single location, let alone a small one, but Futureless Things was able to share different stories with the use of a simple store.

All these movie genres were seen in a span of less than 24 hours through the eyes of different store clerks. This even proves to be true for real life clerks. They experience so much in one day and try to do what they can to pass the time. For those who are not in their position, we simply spend a few minutes in the store and pay for what we have bought, while store clerks have to live out the same day repeatedly.

It is hard for me, a Filipina, to give a detailed and accurate review of Futureless Things because of all the underlying Korean ideas and banter seen in the film. However, from what I have picked up about Korean culture throughout the years, I can say that the convenience store’s customers are a representation of Korea’s modern society.

At first, I thought people would enter the store at random. However, I started to observe that everyone was not the same. Some were from another race, religion, and status of life. Paul Lee, one of the store clerks, who would listen to English audiobooks during his down time, tried to converse with a mother and her child who spoke English as they entered the store. However, he was surprised when the mother replied to him in fluent Korean. This scene tackles the Korean craze of trying to speak English proficiently or even forcing your child to only speak this language. The next customers who enter are Middle Eastern women. As they approach the counter, one of them points to her nose and back to a picture of a Korean woman. Paul then understands that she had a nose job to look like a this woman. In this scene, viewers learn more about Korea’s beauty standards.

Because all walks of life, despite status, gender, race or religion, enter convenience stores, store clerks are forced to interact and respect every one of these people. I guess one could say these stores bring society together in one way or another.

There are still multiple scenes that are confusing to me such as everyone gathering eerily outside the locked store at night, some Korean banter, and even the ending. However, I feel like one must be truly immersed in Korean culture in order to fully understand this comedic yet dark film.