2000s British Horror Part Eight

THE LAST HORROR MOVIE
(2003)
Dir - Julian Richards
Overall: MEH

Utilizing the found footage framework to pose questions about voyeurism and the audience's nature to "not look away" from horrific events that are presented in front of them, writer/director Julian Richards' The Last Horror Movie is hardly the most original work in its field.  Obvious comparisons can be made to the 1992 Belgium film Man Bites Dog which sports a nearly identical premise of a charming sociopath who takes it upon himself to document his serial murders, except said killer's provoking of the viewer is more deliberately pronounced here.  Both by speaking directly into camera and making said camera operator complicit in the task, Kevin Howarth's antagonist finds various narcissistic means to justify his behavior, offering up the twisted idea that those who are watching his exploits are guilty of their own moral shortcomings and should at least share the blame.  Howarth's performance is appropriately pretentious and leans slyly into the comedic, which causes the right amount of discomfort in viewing the juxtaposing, matter-of-fact, and disturbed kill scenes.  It makes its point since we are indeed sticking with the movie-within-a-movie conundrum of violence for entertainment's sake, but all of the ideas present have been served more uniquely both before and since.

 

MUM & DAD

(2008)

Dir - Steven Sheil

Overall: WOOF

 

A pointless and low-rent bit of torture porn from writer/director Steven Sheil, Mum & Dad goes for demented sickness while just ending up being a miserable mess.  Digitally shot and noticeably on the cheap, it pits Olga Fedori's young, Polish immigrant against a "family" of nutjobs who kidnap people to do various forms of unwholesome actives with.  These range from household chores, to getting sewing needles tenderly stuck inside of them, to watching the dad jerk off onto raw meat, to getting beaten with a mallet while being zipped into luggage, to engaging in a Christmas party where mutilated bodies are used for decoration.  The tone is persistently daft as if Sheil is going for exploitative black comedy due to the wackadoo behavior of such villainous people who balance violent, disgusting, manipulative, and perverse outbursts with tenderly and still perverse adherence to a strict family dynamic.  Unfortunately for the viewer, said acts of depravity are just uncomfortable and nasty, presented in a grimy fashion that never conveniently establishes any actual humor, let alone intrigue.  There is more egregious torture porn out there, but the genre is inherently despicable anyway so even if this is comparatively less miserable and insulting than your Haute Tensions or Martyrs, it still sucks.

SALVAGE
(2009)
Dir - Lawrence Gough
Overall: MEH

One of three films produced in Liverpool following the city's 2008 status as a EU City of Culture, Salvage is a nasty zombie/home invasion hybrid with solid performances yet an ugly end result.  The full-length debut from director Lawrence Gough and the screenwriting team of Alan Pattison and Colin O'Donnell, it has a purposely misleading set-up before abruptly switching protagonists and turning into a suburban nightmare where people are trapped inside their homes on Christmas Eve, with aggressive and armed military personal causing full-blown panic from outside.  The sparse amount of characters allows for ample development between them, presenting us with flawed yet well-meaning individuals who are dealing with their own bouts of regret on top of the mysterious, violent developments that are keeping them under lock and key. Gough and cinematographer Simon Tindall chose to shoot everything in intimate, hand-held close-ups or mid-shots, taking a grungy approach on account of the small-scale budget and location setting.  This makes the violence more viscerally impactful, but it becomes exhaustive and dour by the finale where nobody wins and only debilitating trauma awaits those who have survived.  So in other words, the perfect holiday feel-good movie!

2000s Foreign Horror Part Seventeen

A NEW LIFE
(2002)
Dir - Philippe Grandrieux
Overall: WOOF
 
Philippe Grandrieux' second theatrical film A New Life, (La Vie nouvelle), is pretentious nonsense of the most aggravating variety.  It sounds daft enough on paper to tell some semblance of a story with hardly any dialog and non-written characters, all through a series of drawn-out scenes with rape, sex, and some, (presumably), gangsters hugging each other supplying the only "action".  Art films are often defined as such by not following conventional cinematic practices let alone conventional narrative rules, so Grandrieux' choices here could be seen as provocative attempts at making something viscerally ugly and challenging.  In execution though, such dour ingredients create a maddening waste of a hundred and two minutes as the film is not only virtually impossible to follow, but no one on screen says enough, (if anything at all), or does anything interesting, (if anything at all), for any audience member to be even remotely invested in what happens to them.  On top of that, the hand-held cinematography is unwatchabley appalling, with large portions being shot in total or near blackness as the camera gets up close and intimate with images that are as nebulous as the non-existent plot.  It is a stylistically unattractive, emotionally void mess, unless you enjoy about an hour and a half's worth of nothing happening that is occasionally punctuated by blurry women dancing, women getting their hair cut off while crying, and women getting beaten up while also crying.

 

NIGHT WATCH
(2004)
Dir - Timur Bekmambetov
Overall: MEH
 
One of the first mammoth blockbusters made in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Timur Bekmambetov's big-budget, music video-edited, gore-ridden, CGI-fest Night Watch, (Nochnoy Dozor), is his loud, messy, and still inventive adaptation of Sergei Lukyanenko's novel of the same name.  The mythology present in such a supernatural landscape is overwhelmingly complex at times and Bekmambetov's high-octane, cranked-up style is often comically over-done, but any movie cramming this much into is is bound to have something stick.  Good and bad vampires with their own centuries-established and self-maintained police force, shapeshifting, medieval battles, prophesies, curses, vortexes, plus spine swords, it is an "everything but the kitchen sink" mishmash to be sure.  Only occasional moments transpire that slow the proceedings down in an attempt to try and catch up to the bombastic presentation, but it is best to just sit back and give into the bulldozing tone which is high enough on schlock to consistently amuse those looking for such things.  For others though, the lack of any subtlety whatsoever might be too ridiculous to bare.

 

KANDISHA

(2008)

Dir - Jérôme Cohen-Olivar

Overall: MEH

The sophomore effort Kandisha from Moroccan/French filmmaker Jérôme Cohen-Olivar has sincere performances, incessantly bleak atmospherics, and a prominent feminist agenda that is unfortunately melded with a rambling plot that fails to evoke its otherworldly folklore elements.  Set in contemporary times, the story centers around Amira Casar's traumatized protagonist; a hot shot lawyer whose daughter was accidentally killed sometime shortly before she gets handed a case of a woman whose abusive husband was murdered by the vengeance-seeking spirit of the title.  More of a gut-wrenching drama about the loss of a child than a conventional horror movie, the supernatural components still serve a purpose of bridging the old world with the new, where hundreds of years of non-existent rights for women are now being usurped, not just by the ghost lady who is going around beheading any man who continues to abide by such violently oppressive tactics, but also by the prestigious, well-respected career that Casar's character is still upholding.  Though it meanders into unnecessary avenues, it also has an admirable agenda, plus Cohen-Olivar refuses to let any humor into the proceedings, even with David Carradine's intentionally rambling cameo as a mental inmate, which otherwise may have provided some chuckles.

2000s Asian Horror Part Twenty-Four

ALIVE

(2002)

Dir - Ryuhei Kitamura

Overall: MEH

 

Though not as mind-numbingly insulting as his debut Versus, filmmaker Ryuhei Kitamura's follow-up Alive, (Araivu), still proves to be a faulty exorcise in badassery.  An adaptation of Tsutomu Takahashi's manga of the same name, it takes place entirely in an oppressive, black steel, scientific prison complex where a mutated entity is experimented on as it jumps bodies to the most blood-thirsty host.  The set design is impressive, giving it a dark, wet, and steamy cyberpunk aesthetic that suits characters dressed in shiny leather who stare each other down with inhuman patience as repetitive dialog is slowly, slowly delivered.  At least an hour of its one-hundred and ten minute running time could be trimmed to keep the viewer from dozing off as Kitamura is once again working with a minimalist story line here and one that is stretched to a breaking point by a glacially paced plot that offers up little if any new information of any significance along its route.  The CGI effects are typically cartoony and the wire-action stunts mixed with the techno-sci-fi visuals are clearly meant to recall The Matrix, but there is not nearly enough substance here to munch on as it simply becomes a plodding and cynical action movie with no pulse.

 

R-POINT
(2004)
Dir - Su-chang Kong
Overall: MEH

 

A Vietnam-set horror movie that blows some of its interesting supernatural ideas with a sluggish and inconclusive plot, R-Point is at least atmospherically on point.  The debut from filmmaker Su-chang Kong, it was shot on location in Cambodia and largely takes place at the abandoned Bokor Palace Hotel, which provides an accurate setting for a 1972 backdrop where a South Korean platoon is sent to investigate missing soldiers in what proves to be a nebulously haunted area.  While the premise is rock solid for war-torn, spooky shenanigans to unfold, the cast exhibits the right type of macho posturing, and Kong captures the locale in all of its exotic grime, his screenplay unfortunately gets lost in the weeds.  The one-note crop of characters throw a lot of expletives at each other, blending together to the point of merely becoming casualty fodder for malevolent spirits to vaguely drive mad.  Going the ambiguous route would otherwise work if the story had more memorable set pieces or led to a satisfying payoff, but instead it just gets more muck-heavy and meanders around as if it is building to a mystery whose explanation is never even attempted let alone given.

 

THE HEIRLOOM

(2005)

Dir - Leste Chen

Overall: MEH

The debut from Taiwanese music video director Leste Chen and his to-date only work in supernatural horror, The Heirloom, (Zhai bian), is a laborious affair that never picks up any momentum and grows increasingly confused along the way.  Despite an overbearingly gloomy set design which props itself up in a spacious family mansion in desperate need of a makeover, the film does everything incorrectly.  The script by Dorian Li is both convoluted and boring, teasing a sacrificial dead baby practice in the prologue and then abandoning it for completely wooden characters slowly wandering around the crippling abode, investigating noises or the mysterious appearances/murders of other also completely wooden characters.  Meanwhile, the melancholic, romantic music swells through every scene and Chen occasionally throws in some half-corked spooky flourishes to break up a meandering plot that borders on incoherence by the lackluster finale.  It is an interesting trainwreck of sorts; one that looks impressive enough, seems to be taking itself seriously, and has an arthouse agenda, yet also one that fails to bring any of its ideas together while dropping the ball as both an atmospheric horror movie, an inciting mystery, and an emotionally resonant drama.

2000s Asian Horror Part Twenty-Three

THE UNINVITED

(2003)

Dir - Lee Soo-yeon

Overall: MEH

Yet another movie with the title The Uninvited, (A Table for Four), this one stems from South Korea and serves as the full-length debut for filmmaker Lee Soo-yeon.  Though supernatural elements are present, it has a persistently melancholic tone, and there are a few unsettling revelations dished out, this is more of an overbearing drama than a conventional horror film.  Not that it needs to pick a team, with Lee utilizing a Kiyoshi Kurosawa-styled approach that is glacially slow and dishes out the spooky moments without any hackneyed jump scare or overbearing music.  This creates the appropriately intimate atmosphere for information to gradually unfold between two characters who cross each other's paths and may or may not have psychic abilities.  While the tone is refreshingly mature, the over two hour running time allows for things to meander to the point where even the most patient of viewers might lose interest before things start to kind of/not really crystalize.  Thankfully though, the performances are strong, particularly Jun Ji-hyun as an emotionally aloof woman who is traumatized after witnessing the murder of her friend's children by said friend's own hands.  The entire thing is only compelling to a point, but it has a severity to it is intentionally chilling.

 

ARANG

(2006)

Dir - Sang-hoon Ahn

Overall: MEH

 

South Korean filmmaker Sang-hoon Ahn's full-length debut Arang serves as a contemporary re-imagining of the Joseon Dynasty folk tale of the same name.  A cliche fest from front to back as far as presentation goes, the central, police detective protagonists are likeable and have a natural chemistry with each other.  Teaming up a female cop with a young, male upstart may spell formulaic banter between the two, but they are an agreeable lot to get to the bottom of yet another vengeful spirit mystery where yet another pale white, creaky, head-tilting spectre with animated, jet-lack hair obscuring her face is behind such supernatural shenanigans.  We also have loud noises punctuating every one of said ghost's appearances, nursery rhyme musical cues, waking nightmare hallucinations, creepy kids, a Saw-styled plot twist, a room discovered with pictures all over the wall, and a handful of other set pieces that are lifted from just as many other movies.  Rape, newborn baby murder, and even a dog dying provide plenty of unpleasant specifics to work with, plus the finale gets muddled with implausible dialog and too many flashbacks, making this a messy, derivative, and disagreeable bit of K-horror.

X-CROSS

(2007)

Dir - Kenta Fukasaku

Overall: MEH

Bathrooms, cell phones, and leg amputations join forces in Kenta Fukasaku's X-Cross, (Ekusu Kurosu Makyō Densetsu, X-Cross: Legend of the Devil's Nest); an adaptation of Nobuyuki Jōkō's novel Sono Kētai wa X-Cross de that gets more silly as it goes along.  Fukasaku adapts a knowingly tongue-in-cheek tone from the on-set, punctuating typical J-horror scare tactics with busy camerawork, busy music, over-the-top performances, a couple of ridiculous fight scenes, and a zig-zagging narrative that is broken up into chapters ala a Quentin Tarantino movie.  This annoyingly allows for several scenes to replay almost in their entirety to provide context; context which is only necessary for audience members that are completely not paying attention since said call-backs occur only a handful of minutes after each other.  Ultimately, the flashy approach fails to hide a plot with predictable, would-be twists, but the production design is impressive once we get to the remote village cult's sacrificial alter set piece which recklessly dances between part atmospheric folk horror and part jacked-up schlock.  Taking any of it seriously would be a misstep since no one here seems to be doing such a thing and thankfully the story has enough wacky ingredients, colorful characters, and goofy revelations to chuckle at.

2000s Asian Horror Part Twenty-Two

INTO THE MIRROR
(2003)
Dir - Kim Sung-ho
Overall: MEH

Loosely remade across the Pacific by Alexandre Aja five years later as Mirrors, Kim Sung-ho's debut Into the Mirror, (Geoul sokeuro), pulls off some clever camera misdirects here or there, but it is otherwise a forgettable and bloated work in supernatural horror.  Trying to get unnerving juice out of the concept of reflections, alternate dimensions, or doppelgängers is a tactic that has been around in uncanny fiction even before movies were a thing, but Kim's story here lazily settles on a typical vengeful spirit motif while only haphazardly toying with its more interesting ideas.  Yoo Ji-tae makes for a likeable yet flawed protagonist who takes a job at his uncle's mall as chief of security after his legitimate police career came to an end due to a botched hostage shooting.  Said mishap involved mirrors because of course it did, which makes the fact that he is now dealing with an unrelated ghost that turns people's reflections against themselves more of a hackneyed coincidence than an ingenious plot device.  Overlong by at least twenty or so minutes, Kim lets the pacing slag to its dopey conclusion and even though the film has a consistent and humorless tone, it still fails to impress.

CELLO

(2005)
Dir - Lee Woo-cheol
Overall: MEH

The debut Cello from South Korean filmmaker Lee Woo-cheol, (who also penned the screenplay), is a bog-standard vengeful spirit yarn, playing by the rules without offering up any scares that are either inventive or frightening.  Centered around a cellist instructor with a mysterious past involving one of her contemporaries that died in a car crash while she was behind the wheel, all of the inevitable twists and turns prove predictable for anyone rightly assuming that there will be twists and turns in the first place.  Motifs like a recently arrived and creepy house servant who does not speak, waking nightmares, misleading flashbacks that are shown correctly later on, cryptic phone calls and text messages, hallucinations, characters lying badly, and a déjà vu ending that clearly spells disaster are all nothing new and ergo nothing interesting in the merely competent manner that they are used here.  Some of the deaths are nasty and it goes for shock value in the fact that both children and animals are not sparred any supernatural wrath, but it relies too heavily on a stale, jump scare + ominous music = been there/done that framework.

 

FORBIDDEN SIREN

(2006)

Dir - Yukihiko Tsutsumi

Overall: MEH

An adaptation of the Sony video game Siren by prolific television director Yukihiko Tsutsumi, Forbidden Siren, (Siren, Sairen), is a formulaic supernatural outing with few surprises up its sleeve.  Set on an isolated island where of course everyone is weird, it has a similar hook inherent in the Silent Hill series where a blaring siren signals some sort of malevolent secret.  As opposed to such a noise turning the entire location into a bizarro-world hell dimension, here it merely sets off a lot of wind, shaky handheld camerawork, spastic editing, and the occasional zombied-out local who stumbles around wildly with bloodshot eyes yet otherwise poses zero threat.  It follows closely enough to the source material, with a psychological twist that should be easy enough for most viewer's to see coming, yet also one that unavoidably comes off as convoluted and silly.  While the jump scares are thankfully left alone, the digital effects are laughably terrible, an incessant and cornball scary music score sets an overbearing atmosphere that kills all potential subtly and mysterious creepiness, plus the aforementioned busy cinematography is more annoying than mood-setting.  As far as video game movies go, there are obviously far worse out there, but the humdrum results here are to be expected considering that most films of such an ilk do not come out all that great.

2000s Asian Horror Part Twenty-One - (Shinya Tsukamoto Editon)

A SNAKE OF JUNE

(2002)
Overall: MEH

A typically stylistic yet exhaustively one-note indulgence in strangeness from filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, A Snake of June, (Rokugatsu no hebi), has an erotic agenda that is meant to upheave domestic complacency when it comes to the bedroom. Presented in blue monochrome and done in the director's usual jittery, shaky-cam, montage style, it concerns a mild-mannered suicide hotline worker in an agreeable yet passionless marriage who undergoes a sexual awakening after one of her previous call-ins blackmails her. Kinky without being disturbingly perverse, Asuka Kurosawa's protagonist embracing her stalker's demands is more icky than any of the actual acts that he makes her do, which involve wearing a short skirt in public, buying a dildo, using it in a restroom, and eventually posing in a horny haze with her clothes off in the rain. The first two acts are comparatively more straightforward in Kurosawa's naughty arc, but the last several minutes switch to her husband and the perpetrator of her newfound horniness, resulting in a confused mess that loses its steamy steam and comes off as just weird for the sake of being weird.

 

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE
(2006)
Overall: MEH

 

Another unflinching work from filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, Nightmare Detective, (Akumu Tantei), has an inventive enough premise to be of interest, yet it is ruined by some atrociously aggressive cinematography that is disorienting even by Tsukamoto's busy standards.  Shot on location in Adachi, Tokyo with a limited budget, (nothing new for Tsukamoto), the director's insistence on utilizing handheld cameras exclusively while frantically crosscutting already haphazardly framed footage in a schizophrenic manner renders large portions of the movie unwatchable.  This includes all of the graphic dream sequences and kill scenes which instead of being viscerally disturbing, end up as a frustratingly mess that become a chore to sit through.  The movie is also sluggish in its nihilistic monotony, with all of the main characters stuck in a dreary, zero-energy, suicidal daze that fuels the mysterious coma patient, (played by Tsukamoto himself), who murders people in the dreams after they dial his cell phone number.  Not that the unsettling material would have benefited completely from a more conventional approach, but fusing cinéma vérité aesthetics with surreal brutality simply works against the final product in this case.

 

NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE 2

(2008)

Overall: GOOD

 

A stand-alone sequel to his 2006 thriller Nightmare Detective, Shinya Tsukamoto's apply-titled Nightmare Detective 2, (Akumu Tantei 2), goes in an interestingly singular route from its predecessor.  Not at all the police procedural/serial killer manhunt that the first movie was, this one finds Ryuhei Matsuda's endlessly mopey title character in an unshakable bout of despair as he spends his days plagued by his own troubled backstory while wallowing on the floor of his old house.  A prequel of sorts then, Tsukamoto and Hisakatsu Kuroki's script delves into what has made Matsuda's protagonist the mysterious anti-hero that he is, doing so in a challenging way that gradually morphs with the side plot of a teenage girl who is suffering from a more bog-standard vengeful spirit situation.  Though it is still shot in indecipherable, shaky-hand close-ups at times, such moments are gratefully far less frequent than in its predecessor, with a strong emphasis on horrific and surreal set pieces taking center stage.  Best of all, the climax is powerfully barren and more like a devastating outpouring of grief than a refreshing break from the array of supernatural events that came before it.  Tsukamoto says more within these calm, final moments than he does with the ninety-plus minutes that came before it, yet thankfully those ninety-plus minutes are still enticing in their disturbed ambiguity.

TETSUO: THE BULLET MAN

(2009)

Overall: MEH

Boasting another aggressive overload of painful cinematography and editing, Shinya Tsukamoto's third entry in his Tesuo series Testuo: The Bullet Man steps the furthest away from the initial cyberpunk nightmare that kicked everything off.  Shot in English and following some semblance of a conventional be it messy narrative, it further differentiates itself from its predecessors by providing an explanation as to this particular man's transformation into machine with a corporate government backdrop.  This turns the whole thing into an action movie of sorts instead of a surreal, body horror fever dream as had been previously established, which may not satisfy the tastes of those who championed Testuo: The Iron Man or, (to a lesser extent), Testuo II : Body Hammer.  Performance wise, this is a weak offering, partly due to several of the actors not speaking in their native tongue, but even the Caucasian ones seem wooden and aloof at times.  If one was to look at individual stills from the finished product, it would appear to have some nasty visual flare, but when viewed as the actual motion picture that it is, good luck trying to decipher anything that you are seeing on screen during the jacked-up action and transformation sequences.  With a bombardment of lighting-fast editing and shots that looks as if whoever was holding the camera was in the middle of a mosh pit, it makes for an impenetrable viewing experience to say the least.

2000s Asian Horror Part Twenty - (4 Horror Tales Series)

FORBIDDEN FLOOR

(2006)

Dir - Ho-Young Kwon

Overall: MEH

 

Sticking to the formula apparent in each of the 4 Horror Tales films, (all of which were made by first time directors and three of which were written by Il-han Yoo, including this one), Forbidden Floor, (Ne beonjje cheung), takes its cue from better J-horror properties and comes off as a mediocre at best rehash of them.  This one concerns a haunted apartment complex that of course virtually no one lives in.  The only people we see besides a just-moved-in mother and daughter who the story centers around are two assholes and the ghost of another woman who seems to supernaturally reside on the mysterious fourth floor of the title.  With a long-haired specter that makes creaky noises, a stoic little kid, an overworked and ergo desperate mom, a plot twist, and rudimentary scare tactics left and right, all of the ingredients are in place to make this instantly forgettable.  Ho-Young handles the material in a pedestrian manner, where the camera is largely stationary, the lighting flat, and the whole thing is about as scary as an ice cream cone with a couple of green filters thrown in to spice things up.

FEBRUARY 29

(2006)

Dir - Jeong Jong-hoon

Overall: MEH

 

A leap year horror movie because sure why not, February 29, (Iwol isibguil), is the only film from director Jeong Jong-hoon who proves ill-equipped to deliver a compelling supernatural yarn in the ninety minutes that he is given.  The premise may sound fetching before realizing that it is made up of hackneyed tropes, not least of which is an opening in a mental asylum where a clearly insane woman explains the film's events in flashback to a journalist.  Said events concern some different murdered lady whose body was never a found; a murdered lady who also should have died on the date of the title yet shows back up a few days early with her hair obscuring her face whenever the script tells her to.  Taking more of a non-moving approach than a slow boil one, Jong-hoon has the right idea in creating impending dread, yet he does so clumsily while hitting many of the required K-horror beats and doing nothing unique with any of them.  The plotting is monotonous, the whole thing feels about forty minutes longer than it actually is, and the third act bounces between each time line in a more aggressive manner that draws everything out even further.  Like the other entries in the 4 Horror Tales series, the amateur production qualities and skills behind the lens ultimately undue a story that is merely mediocre in the first place.

 

ROOMMATES
(2006)
Dir - Kim Eun-kyeong
Overall: MEH

 

Though it muddles things up during the last act, Roommates, (D-day), is an acceptable entry into the "nightmare school" arena of exploitation film.  A cousin to women in prison movies, Kim Eun-kyeong's installment for the 4 Horror Tales series removes the sleaze, nudity, and lesbianism yet keeps the concept of militantly strict teachers who inflict a year-long routine of unwavering discipline upon their students in the form of regimented studying and psychological manipulation as to motivate them to not be "losers" who "can't handle" the real world once they graduate.  It says much about the traumatic pressures felt by college hopefuls who have been brainwashed to some extend into thinking that enough study will warrant them a promising future, but the supernatural elements inherent in Eun-kyeong's story are murky at best.  These students could be suffering from nothing more than hallucinations brought upon by gossip and stress, ghostly activity that is determined to have history tragically repeat itself, or the shady faculty could be behind the entire ordeal.  The ending is more abruptly puzzling and surreal than satisfactory, plus the plotting is monotonous enough as to not warrant such a mishandled conclusion.

DARK FOREST
(2006)
Dir - Jung-min Kim
Overall: WOOF
 
Dull, cheap, and wretchedly paced, director Jung-min Kim's debut Dark Forest, (Jugeum-ui sup, Forest of Death), is an abysmal offering in the 4 Horror Tales series and the only one not to be written by Il-han Yoo.  Roughly forty-minutes too long, its shot-on-digital-video aesthetic is forgivable, as is the location setting, minimal amount of action, and small crop of characters since movies are expensive.  What is not forgivable is the padded presentation which seems hellbent on beating the same dead horse into the ground that is found in virtually every other zombie movie.  This of course refers to characters struggle to "kill" their loved ones when they become ghouls, and such a derivative trope is the only one explored for the second half of an already comatose-inducing whole.  Said characters stand or sit quietly while the exact same piece of music plays throughout its entirely and then starts over from the beginning again, (not an exaggeration), and then they repeatedly and even more slowly ask each other if they will murder them when it is necessary to do so.  Cue more standing and crying in front of their now undead acquaintances until the movie mercifully ends.  The initial set up introduces some drama to work with between two brothers and the fact that So Yi-hyun's character has psychic powers, but none of this is followed through on.  Instead, the production just stretches everything out with a bunch of crap that has been done to death so many times before.