Categories are powerful. If I were to classify this film as a “romantic comedy” at this point in the review, a substantial portion of potential viewers will have dismissed the idea of going to see it by the end of this sentence. Our hard-wired categorization processes simultaneously serve as the lighthouse and blind spot of all facets of decision-making. The Beauty Inside half-heartedly sets out to explore this complex aspect of cognitive function in the context of romantic relationships. It tracks the life and love of protagonist Woo-Jin, a 29 year-old man with a highly unorthodox affliction: He is devoid of all social categories because his race, age, and gender changes every time he falls asleep.

The Beauty Inside is a feature length Korean adaptation of a US web series of the same name. Thankfully I saw the Baek Jong-yeol directed film before coming across The Beauty Inside in its original, gimmicky audience-interactive format (unless you’re R.L. Stein and the genre is children’s horror literature, limit the plot to a single predetermined ending). The story’s unique premise is worthy of the more classical delivery that Jong-yeol’s remake provides: 120 continuous minutes of passive viewing.

Woo-Jin was born a heterosexual Korean male who identifies as such throughout the film. His physical form aligns comfortably with his perceived self right up until his 18th birthday at which stage he looks in the mirror and finds a balding middle-aged man peering back. Woo-Jin soon realizes that he’s fated to assume a drastically different aesthetic everyday for the rest of his life: He could wake up a New Zealand preschooler one day and an aging Japanese grandmother the next. Importantly, these changes are purely superficial; Woo-Jin’s personality, memory, and sense of self remain intact throughout each transformation.

The first half of the film tackles how a person lacking in identifiable features might go about navigating day-to-day life. The second half goes on to depict the complications that arise for Yi-soo, Woo-Jin’s straight female love interest, as she struggles under the pressure of her peers’ perception that her newfound “relationship” is in fact her going through the motions of a particularly giddy and promiscuous schizophrenic episode.

Most of the time Woo-Jin takes on the appearances of handsome, young Korean men- not a far stretch from his original template. We do get to witness one brief peck between Yi-soo and Woo-Jin in female form; otherwise the content is One Million Moms and Kim Davis friendly.

CONCLUSION: Baek Jong-yeol succeeds in blending aspects of realism and fantasy but the film’s largely conservative execution doesn’t bode well with the story’s progressive undertones; thus ‘The Beauty Inside’ ends up offering little more than light-hearted (although enjoyable) entertainment.