2013 Horror Part Twelve

THE LAST DAYS

Dir - David Pastor/Àlex Pastor

Overall: GOOD

 

Writer/director brothers David and Àlex Pastor's follow-up to their 2009 debut Carriers once again explores a post-apocalyptic landscape, this time removing the zombies in place of a bizarre virus that causes fatal agoraphobia for the populous.  Switching back to their native Spain, The Last Days, (Los últimos días), was shot in Barcelona with a significant enough budget to accurately portray the type of urban decay that quickly sets in when everyone is forced to make due with rain water, dead pigeons, and depleting supplies while perpetually stuck indoors.  The unlikely pairing of a corporate peon and a ringer boss brought in to enforce company cutbacks provides an adequate amount of tension as they learn to trust each other in a Mad Max, survival of the fittest world where any forms of law and order seem to have been obliterated.  There is plenty of momentum to the plotting where both Quim Gutiérrez and José Coronado have no other driving force than to be reunited with their loved ones and the finale manages to be both heartbreaking and uplifting.  The Pastor brothers may be proving to have a narrative obsession of sorts, but this is a superior work to their first film and one whose emotional turmoil is well-earned.

 

THE CONJURING

Dir - James Wan

Overall: MEH

 

Interchangeable with The Haunting of Connecticut, The Amityville Horror, and Insidious, (plus hundreds of others), the latter's director James Wan continues his insistence in delivering dumb supernatural schlock with The Conjuring; not the first movie to be based on the fraudulent exploits of ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, but the first to feature them as actual characters.  Patrick Wilson returns from the aforementioned Insidious, this time as half of the husband/wife Warren duo, with Vera Farmiga playing the sensitive psychic medium because ya just gotta have one of those.  You also have to have a down-on-their-luck family moving into an old house, whispering spirits who perform arbitrary paranormal activity, a kid with an imaginary friend, the Annabelle doll, equipment set up to capture the spookies, a big loud stupid exorcism, ghosts with racoon mascara, and plenty of jump scares to keep the easily startled teenagers happy.  In other words, same crap different horror movie and Wan makes sure not to variate from the formula at any instance.  On the "plus" side, it is unintentionally hilarious to watch everyone taking all of the malevolent tomfoolery seriously, (that of course the Warrens have immediate answers to at virtually all times considering that Lorraine herself was credited as a consultant on the movie), giving the film some much needed camp appeal to offshoot its laughable attempts at creepiness.

 

BANSHEE CHAPTER 

Dir - Blair Erickson
Overall: MEH

Writer/director Blair Erickson's debut Banshee Chapter tries as hard as humanly possible to ruin itself with jump scares, forcing the horror genre's most obnoxiously hackneyed trope into an otherwise clever melding of H.P. Lovecraft's From Beyond and the United States government's documented MKUltra experiments with DMT-19.  On top of that though, the film has a disorienting structure where it nonchalantly zig-zags between a found footage mockumentary and a bog-standard, low-budget movie with handheld camera work.  We never see a cameraman, yet Katia Winter's protagonist narrates various sections, on screen text shows up, and real life senate hearings and interviews from the 1970s and 90s are intermingled with faux-retro surveillance footage and the present day narrative.  It is a bona fide mess in this regard, which begs the question of why Erickson bothered to go such a route instead of just investing his efforts fully in a single format.  Winter turns in a solid performance as a journalist exploring the spooky disappearance of her close friend, but Ted Levine also shows up to once again unintelligibly marble-mouth his dialog as a Hunter S. Thompson stand-in that would have been a hoot if we could understand at least half of what he was saying.  The CGI monster faces and Erickson's insistence to punctuate every single "scary" scene with a deafening noise after some silence is unforgivable nonsense, which just makes the whole thing a frustrating ordeal that deserves a far better treatment.

2012 Horror Part Fifteen

I AM A GHOST

Dir - H.P. Mendoza

Overall: GOOD

 

A Kickstarted, economist haunted house film of sorts from independent filmmaker H.P. Mendoza, I Am a Ghost is a refreshing take on the genre due to its minimalist production values, as well as an unconventional presentation and narrative.  Besides the disembodied voice of Jeannie Barroga, Anna Ishida is the only actor who is focused on; an unassuming young woman who goes about her day alone in a spacious house that looks as if it was shot in an authentic, old timey bed and breakfast.  An unorthodox opening title sequence sets the stage for the equally singular movie that follows it, as the same scenes are shown over and over again in varying orders and with subtle tweaks introduced to them until we finally get some dialog to calm the viewer's frustration.  Tackling lingering spirits who are stuck on the mortal plane as well as the mediums whose business it is to guide those spirits into a proper afterlife, it revitalizes some familiar concepts in a manner that is equally challenging, funny, and thought-provoking.  While some of the budgetary issues result in cartoon monster faces and faulty scare tactics in the final act, the film is heavy on a singular style with its disjointed construction, photographic/rounded-corner aspect ratio, undisclosed period setting, stilted dialog, lush surreal flourishes, and some otherwise startling creepiness.  Mendoza crafts something that is intimate while being simultaneously fragmented, which further mirrors the concept of specters going through a disjointed afterlife.

CHRONICLE

Dir - Josh Trank

Overall: MEH

Gimmicky yet fun to a point, John Trank and Max Landis' Chronicle is burdened by a pointless found footage presentation which is so illogically utilized that it undermines an otherwise acceptable super villain origin story.  Found footage movies inherently struggle with the probability of its characters pointing the camera at incredible occurrences come hell or high water and this example is one of the most laughably convoluted.  Dane DeHaan both choosing to and being allowed to bring a bulky, expensive camera to school and everywhere else in his life is ridiculous enough, but as he and two other fellow students gain physics-manipulating powers and the trusty cameras are always capturing everything in a cinematically conventional manner, it crosses over into the frustrating and unnecessary.  By the would-be thrilling conclusion, the rapid editing between all manner of camera comes off as if the filmmakers just gave up in maintaining any law or order within their chosen method.  This erroneous decision aside, the narrative follows a predictable chain of events where power corrupts the one person on screen who we never doubt for a second will be corrupted, but there are still some interesting set pieces that spring up along the way.  The special effects work occasionally dips its toes into embarrassment, but it is largely on the up-and-up and the movie works most effectively when exploring how three high school kids who would otherwise never click as a trio all manage to bond together with their mysterious, newfound abilities and hopes for the future.

SADAKO 3D

Dir - Tsutomu Hanabusa

Overall: WOOF

What exactly went wrong behind the scenes for the latter Ringu installment Sadako 3D is anyone's guess, but in any event, decisions were made, money was spent, and a terrible sequel/reboot of sorts was produced.  An adaptation of Koji Suzuki's fifth book in the series, director Tsutomu Hanabusa takes his first crack at the horror genre which may explain why the results are so abysmal.  A bombardment of unacceptably awful CGI effects have the adverse effect of whatever they were supposed to achieve, instead taking one out of the proceedings long before the laughably misguided, over-the-top finale arrives.  Said conclusion finds our main protagonist squaring off against a full-blown army of "girl from the well" ghosts who have inexplicably turned into cartoon spider monsters that explode into pixelated leaves every time that Satomi Ishihara merely screams at them.  The script has rightfully been panned for its laziness and inconsistencies, so it is a fool's errand to try and make sense out of the failed potential here to update the VHS-cursing title spirit into something that is more readily accessible to spread its vengeance via laptop and cellphone.  Instead, we just have non-written characters and sluggish pacing, plus big, dumb, loud, and nonsensical set pieces that look worse than place-holder graphics for a video game.

2012 Horror Part Fourteen

HELTER SKELTER

Dir - Mika Ninagawa

Overall: MEH

 

The second film from fashion photographer-turned director Mika Ninagawa doubles as her second manga adaptation.  Arriving five years after her debut Sakuran, Helter Skelter, (Herutâ sukerutâ), brings Kyoko Okazaki's source material to visually fetching life.  Vibrantly colorful while frequently venturing into the surreal via drawn-out montages set to familiar classical music, it explores a cartoonish level of vanity that comes with fabricated fashion idols and their desperation to stay relevant in their own eyes, let alone in as many other people's eyes as possible.  As optically pleasing and stylistically grand as the movie is, the story never picks up momentum, which is largely due to an underwritten protagonist played by Erika Sawajiri.  A surgically-created super model that optimizes It-girl perfection, her character is consistently uninteresting with her lone personality trait being a cripplingly frail sense of narcissism that is threatened by the slightest breeze, giving her ample opportunity to spiral out of control and never once gain the audience's sympathy.  This could be a deliberate move in having the almost sole focus be on somebody vapid enough to mirror the crystal clear theme that conventional beauty and celebrity obsession are superficial wastelands, but it makes for a trying watch that is, (perhaps accurately), all show with less interesting substance.

DON'T LET THE RIVERBEAST GET YOU

Dir - Charles Roxburgh

Overall: WOOF

A movie like visual effects man/SOV camp peddler Charles Roxburgh's Don't Let the Riverbeast Get You is one of those whose consistent lousiness is no doubt intentional, yet how intentional remains the biggest question.  A collaboration between Roxburgh and screenwriter Matt Farley who had and continues to dish out low-rent B-movie parodies, the duo goes for the self-aware genre nyuck nyucks of Larry Blamire, but they drop the ball in every single production aspect. All of the actors are charismatic-less, unprofessional schlubs, their eyes frequently look off camera to pick up their lines which they stumble through anyway, it is as cinematically competent as a home movie shot by your grandma, the constant jokes are head-scratchingly awkward instead of remotely funny, the rubber suit monster is shot in broad daylight and looks atrocious, and there is a cheap Casio-worthy keyboard score running throughout the entire thing until some original songs are thrown in that are sink-in-your-seat embarrassing.  Most of these aspects seem to be there on purpose, but that purpose is clearly meant to be humorous and the biggest faux pas of any comedy is when the viewer is more confused and bored than laughing with the proceedings.  Even laughing AT what transpires here is a difficult endeavor and though everyone on board seems to have their goofy hearts in the right place, boy is it crap.

LEAVING D.C.

Dir - John Criss

Overall: GOOD

Taking full advantage of the found footage framework where a feature length film can be made for zero dollars, John Criss' Leaving D.C. is a wonderfully creepy, minimalist work that ducks out too early with a painfully abrupt ending, yet otherwise delivers the chills.  As the only person on screen sans a handful of minutes when a friend/frustrated non-love interest comes to visit, Criss plays an unassuming, middle-aged man who flees the big city to gleefully move out into the middle of nowhere, sending compact video journals back to his friends from an OCD support group.  This takes care of the "Why is he filming this?" conundrum and it also allows for Criss to be awkard in front of the camera, giving him a likeable, everyday Joe quality that is easy to sympathize with.  The disturbing series of events are played out gradually and inexplicably instead of in-your-face terrifying, giving Criss' lone protagonist enough logical reason to stay put and update everyone on his predicament.  Getting right to the point every time that he turns the camera on, it makes for an agreeable, suspenseful pace and besides just being a clever series of odd, unexplained spookiness that would make anyone think twice about living where the closest anything is over a half hour away, the movie is a compelling examination of one man's relatable insecurities and isolation colliding with the otherwordly.

2012 Horror Part Thirteen

THALE

Dir - Aleksander L. Nordaas

Overall: MEH

 

Moody yet underwhelming, Thale is the sophomore effort from Norwegian filmmaker Aleksander L. Nordaas; an ultra low-budget, contemporary, feral woman by-way-of folklore genre offering.  Largely shot in his father's basement on a measly $10,000 and with a minimal cast, Nordaas handled many of the production duties himself and creates an intriguing, sorrowful tone with intimate camerawork, a longing musical score from Raymond Enoksen and Geirmund Simonsen, and a story about a hulder, (a Scandinavian forest creature that is usually depicted as humanoid except for having a cows tail), that is uncovered by a two-person clean up crew.  Perhaps due to the insufficient budget which is ill-equipped for the grander scheme of the material, the film is low on action and heavy on talking and expository information which is given via tape recordings left behind by someone conducting experiments on the mystical entity of the title.  This makes for a tedious watch that spins its wheels and delivers an anti-climactic finish that raises more questions on top of the ones that the movie barely brought up in the first place.  Worse yet is some absolutely wretched CGI, which is not even necessary as it presents a cartoon version of the already human-esque monsters that Silje Reinåmo managed to pull off just fine in her birthday suit.

THE BATTERY

Dir - Jeremy Gardner

Overall: GOOD

The debut The Battery, (Ben & Mickey vs. The Dead), from actor turned-writer/director Jeremy Gardner was put together with a $6,000 budget garnished from friends and it takes an intimate, aesthetically low-key look at a zombie outbreak.  A tired premise to be sure, but the presentation is at least interesting here, headed by Gardner and co-star Adam Cronheim's chemistry with each other as two local ball players who accidentally get paired together for the long trek through the undead wasteland.  The first half is overcrowded with indie rock montages, (many of which come within literal seconds of each other), but these are interjected enough with the opposing view points and personalities of the protagonists to keep things moving.  Though there are some amusing set pieces earlier on, (and one masturbation sequences that tips its toes into "Seriously dude?" absurdity), the drawn-out finale revs up the tension at a meticulous pace and delivers a gut-punching, ambiguous ending that seems well-earned for a story about the monotony and arguable futility of survival.  Maybe ten or so minutes too long as to emphasis the severe boredom that sets in when the normal world has been replaced with complete solitude that is only interrupted by ghouls who want to munch on your flesh, but for something made so incredibly cheap, it represents a refreshing alternative to the type of derivative, large-scale post-apocalyptic zombie flicks that are out there in droves.

COSMOPOLIS

Dir - David Cronenberg

Overall: MEH

Some committed performances from a plethora of actors who get to monologue to their hearts content have a purposely ponderous effect on David Cronenberg's adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2003 novel Cosmopolis.  Soulless by design, it spends a day in the life of Robert Pattinson's detached, young billionaire whose inability to find some kind of connection with anything going on around him leads him from one vapid conversation to the next.  It is not so much about the frustration of the ninety-nine percenters, (sans Paul Giamatti's character who serves as a speaker-box for the common man, be it an impenetrably insane one), but more about the corruption of the one percenters who have obtained such grotesque amounts of wealth that they look anywhere that their whimsies take them for something to provide solid footing.  Cronenberg's handling of DeLillo's material channels the ambiguity of his William S. Burroughs' reworking Naked Lunch, except with none of the surreal flare to disguise it.  Instead, the movie is rooted in reality while the characters are not, as they go through an aloof existence that offers no answers.  It could all be seen as something intellectually contemplative or just plain ole pretentious in its monotony, but besides one or two startling outbursts in the final act, such dedication to low-level dryness is weary on the brain.

2012 Horror Part Twelve

VAMPS

Dir - Amy Heckerling

Overall: GREAT

Reuniting with Alicia Silverstone after their hugely successful collaboration on Clueless nearly twenty years earlier, writer/director Amy Heckerling takes on the undead in Vamps; a delightful and hilarious horror spoof that is refreshingly light on its feet.  Heckerling's penchant for pop culture references, fast banter, and manageable dramatic stakes are crystalized here where Silverstone and her bestie Krysten Ritter face off against a handful of inconveniences in their struggle to stay modern while not feeding on humans.  A plethora of recognizable faces show up along the way, including but not limited to Sigourney Weaver as the reckless head-vampire "stem", Malcom McDowell as Vlad Tepish, Tod Barry as a minor undead, Dan Stevens and Wallace Shawn as Van Helsing decedents, and Richard Lewis as Silverstone's former counter-culture love interest.  While the budget is only sufficient enough to pull-off CGI of the most utterly embarrassing variety, Heckerling's script cruises along with endlessly hilarious gags that present a world where nearly all of the malevolent tendencies associated with bloodsuckers are de-fanged and made adorably harmless.  The central theme of nostalgia warrants numerous cutaways to Golden Age Hollywood films and old timey flashbacks and it oddly has a coming-of-age agenda, even with protagonists that are pushing a few centuries.

RED KROKODIL

Dir - Domiziano Cristopharo

Overall: WOOF

A Naked Drug Addict - The Movie aka Red Krokodil is a bold yet largely unwatchable examination of the tribulations of substance abuse.  Brock Madson is the only actor on screen or at least the only character on screen as his narcotic-fueled psychosis is host to various hallucinations which include a nude double of himself, another naked person with a large bunny mask on, and an eyeball poking out of the wall.  While these freaky visuals snap the viewer out of the purposely tedious nature of the non-narrative, the overwhelming majority of the run time is just dull and ugly.  Again, this is intentional as Cristopharo and screenwriter Francesco Scardone pull no punches with their harrowing depiction of its subject matter as the day-to-day monotony of Madson's doomed protagonist blends one wretched scene into the other with no variation between them.  Which begs the question of who the audience is for such a thing.  Admirable and even noble perhaps in how determined the production is to slam home its point, (drugs are bad folks), but such a thing is just disturbing and gross as well as being the antithesis of compelling.  Like many an exploitation film, it tries to get by on its audaciousness alone, but it just ends up being a miserable hour and twenty-three minutes that sails off into the atomic bomb sunset without saying anything as profound as it lets on.

REC 3: GENESIS

Dir - Paco Plaza

Overall: MEH

Instead of continuing their writer/director partnership on the REC series, Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaz split for the third and fourth installments, with the latter's REC 3: Genesis emerging two years ahead of Balagueró's REC 4: Apocalypse.  Sticking to the found footage framework only throughout the twenty minute, pre-title opening, the movie eventually settles into its horror/comedy/action shtick and while it delivers crowd-pleasing moments in each of the genres that it attempts to balance, it does so at the cost of each of them.  This is to say that a tonal issue plagues most of the proceedings, where Plaza bites off more than he can chew in a bold attempt to revamp a franchise that many could argue needed no such revamping, let alone any further entries.  On the one hand, retreaded the hand-held camera format could have easily been redundant, but the conventional approach here unavoidably pales in comparison to what Plaza and Balagueró were able to perfect before.  Its gory, well-acted, genuinely amusing, fast-paced, and has a predictable ending that still manages to pull at the heart-strings, (and deservingly so), but it is also just another high-octane zombie movie that does not take itself too seriously, which is something that the world hardly needs more of.

2011 Horror Part Eleven

KOTOKO

Dir - Shinya Tsukamoto

Overall: MEH

Another ultra low-budget slab of disturbed weirdness with aggravatingly awful cinematography from fringe filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, Kotoko finds him collaborating with J-pop artist Cocco on a harrowing journey into a single mother's severe mental illness.  Both Tsukamoto and Cocco share many of the production duties as well as having the most substantial roles on screen, concocting a psychological nightmare that is presented as straight-forward as such a thing can be, with little of the director's usual body horror elements thrown in to freak up the experience.  As a woman whose emotional anguish is never explained in any kind of backstory, Cocco is still captivating as she suffers a never-ending series of violent hallucinations, to the point where any audience member will be questioning every event that we see, including the existence of Tsukamoto's character who falls inexplicably in love with her singing voice to the point where he willfully undergoes body mutilation and violent outbursts.  Cocco's struggling mama may not even be a mama for all we know, but the vagueness of her particularly unnerving ailments is not so much of a problem as is some of the movie's awkard moments, tonal inconsistencies, and the aforementioned out of focus, hand-held camerawork.  Singing segments go on for ages and there are dark humor beats thrown in that jive oddly with moments such as Cocco strangling her toddler son and said son having his brains blown out by a machine gun blast.

JUAN OF THE DEAD

Dir - Alejandro Brugués

Overall: GOOD

 

Riding the line of crass stupidity and clever political commentary, Alejandro Brugués' sophomore full-length Juan of the Dead, (Juan de los Muertos), is a mixed bag of zombie apocalypse high-jinks, yet for another goddamn movie about such a thing, it skirts by with what its got.  Done on a lousy enough budget that is forced to rely on horrendous CGI effects and sub-par undead makeup, the Cuban setting is wonderfully utilized and serves as the primary focus where a walking corpse outbreak is treated as just some more bullshit for the socialist state to deal with; a state that seems to breed slackers and misfits who are all too familiar with not trusting their government and fending for themselves.  This gives it enough of an edge over other zombie comedies out there, as does the hilarious disregard for human life all around.  The title character and his rag-tag group of losers are not a likeable bunch, taking capitalist advantage of their situation, murdering non-zombies either accidentally or purposely if they owe them money at least, and remaining degenerate schlubs through and through.  Still, Brugués interjects some heart underneath all of the gay jokes, naked escapades, slapstick, and references to other horror flicks, leading to a final act that miraculously has some sincere character moments to root for.

 

GUILTY OF ROMANCE

Dir - Sion Sono

Overall: MEH

Inspired loosely by the 1997 murder of Yasuko Watanabe who was an economic researcher that moonlit as a prostitute, Guilty of Romance, (Koi no Tsumi), reveals itself to be an ugly and tragic look into Japan's love hotel district and the women who are drawn to it by various means.  Two different versions exist, with the original Japanese cut running a whopping hundred and forty-four minutes, which could push the provocative subject matter too far into redundant terrain for most viewer's tastes.  Sensationalized as only a Sion Sono movie could be, it explores the docile Japanese housewife stereotype, spending a good amount of time explaining why Miki Mizuno's mild-mannered protagonist would gradually embrace the sexually liberating side of her femininity.  Mizuno narrates the film at various intervals while a flash-forward interjects and broadcasts the inevitable tragedy, letting the viewer in on where the characters are heading so that we can never fully embrace the sexual awakening of an otherwise complacent woman who genuinely loves her well-respected husband even if he treats her more as a docile maid than an equal.  It plays as a part cautionary tale and part feminist calamity, with much of Sono's usual depraved strangeness in place to keep the exploitation value where it belongs.

2011 Horror Part Ten

ATTACK THE BLOCK

Dir - Joe Cornish

Overall: GOOD

 

The full-length debut from writer/director Joe Cornish of comedy duo Adam and Joe fame, Attack the Block is a comedy/action/juvenile delinquent/horror/sci-fi hybrid that suffers from the era's obnoxious slash-and-dash editing style yet is otherwise enjoyable.  Notable for some familiar faces such as Nick Frost, Jodie Whittaker, and John Boyega in his film debut, the script has enough details concerning its disenfranchised characters and setting to give it some cultural weight, even if the emphasis is on wacky set pieces and silliness.  The dialog is colorful in Multicultural London English and delivered rapidly enough to fly past some unfamiliar viewers, but besides the aforementioned, distracting cross-cutting during the more intense sequences, the kinetic energy gives it a compelling sense of urgency.  Also appreciated is a genuinely unique creature design as the pitch-black extraterrestrials look like spiked, shaggy gorilla dogs with no eyes and glow in the dark teeth, a far cry and more menacing variation than that of the cutesy, gray, big-eyed E.T. variety.  Nothing here is laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it delivers the R-rated goods and juggles its multitude of genres better than expected.

FRIGHT NIGHT

Dir - Craig Gillespie

Overall: GOOD

A comedy director and Buffy the Vampire Slayer producer/screenwriter both teaming up to remake Tom Holland's seminal 80s vampire film Fright Night is a logically sound pairing and they plus a well-chosen cast have pulled something off that should have been much worse.  By 2011, a handful of beloved movies from two plus decades back were getting the contemporary treatment and Colin Farrell himself would take the lead again in the following year's Total Recall as well, but existing property cynicism aside, there are some admirable qualities here.  Both Farrell and David Tennant are wonderful in their respective Jerry Dandrige and Peter Vincent roles, Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse make no-brainer choices as two vampire-hunting dweebs, and Toni Collette and Imogen Poots refreshingly buy into the undead shenanigans by the halfway point instead of constantly being exasperated by Charley Brewster's claims of his neighbor's blood-sucking exploits.  Marti Noxon's script tweaks roughly ninety percent of the plot points from the original which avoids giving this a prominent air of redundancy, plus many of the changes that she makes are clever ones that could have made this stand apart from the franchise.  Unfortunately though, she throws in a few too many Buffy-esque/undercutting quips, plus the CGI is horrendous and will frustrate fans of the fantastic practical makeup in Holland's landmark original.

THE CAT

Dir - Byun Seung-wook

Overall: MEH

A generic K-horror offering from writer/director Byun Seung-wook, The Cat, (Goyangi: Jukeumeul Boneun Du Gaeui Nun, The Cat: Eyes that See Death), is both pointless and harmless in its vengeful spirit by-way-of feline agenda.  The script appears to have a quota of cliches to meet; the female protagonist with a troubled past, creepy ghost kids hiding under beds and popping up for predictable jump scare purposes, a friendly male acquaintance to help investigate the mystery, some nightmare sequences, old people behaving aloof and therefor "creepy", and an explanation as to what is going on that is easily foreseeable.  Some of the details surrounding Park Min-young's character like her suffering from claustrophobia, her and Kim Dong-wook's vague romantic inclinations, and her father being an invalid in an old folks home who she never visits are only provided to fill-in some dialog sequences as these elements have no necessary barring to the plot.  Thus by being inconsequential, they are regularly forgotten about and make for a messy whole.  Seung-wook goes through the motions agreeably enough from a pacing perspective, but this is an all too easy one to tune-out of and it is neither atmospherically chilling or interesting at any instance.