I've been a fan of Korean cinema since I was introduced to it around a decade ago. I think that a lot of the world has probably had their eyes opened a bit about how good this country's films are since Parasite ended up sweeping the Academy Awards this past year. Hopefully this encouraged a lot of those people to check out the treasure-trove of films that this country has produced over the years.
I was digging through the Netflix library of all Korean films and ran into this one. I watched all of it expecting something amazing to happen but unfortunately it's actually pretty typical and dare i say, a bit lame.
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One of the most popular actors in recent times from Korea, Song Kang-ho, who was the star of Parasite plays the lead role in this monster horror film. It also features Park Hae-il from Memories of Murder, and Bae Doona from Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. So it is easy enough to say that this cast certainly had the acting "chops" to get the job done.
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Recognize these faces? You see them a lot in the famous films from SK
Released in 2006, this film actually achieved widespread praise for being excellent and even "groundbreaking" and I have no idea where this is coming from. A lot of the film is CGI and the entire film was made for under $11 million, and this is exactly where I think the major problems arise: The CGI does not look good. In fact, I would say it looks downright bad. While this is just my opinion I feel as though Korean movies tend to shy away from CGI-heavy films because of financial limitations.
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Perhaps the praise this film was receiving is the result of critics being impressed that the CGI looks as good as it does considering the relatively small budget. It should be noted, that especially in 2006, $11 million is NOT a small budget for a South Korean film. Consider that Parasite, made 13 years later had almost exactly the same budget and Oldboy had a budget of a mere $3 million.
While they do try in a bit to throw some of that Korean emotion that you might not be expecting (think of Train to Busan) that is so iconic of their movies, for the most part this movie is neither thrilling nor scary and only briefly touches base on societal issues.
The monster also just doesn't provide the necessary fear factor for most people - maybe it's just me because this movie has a very high rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
from the Shudder channel
Now I fully expect to catch some flak for my opinion on this but the film, despite a great cast, just doesn't do it for me and while there are a few good scenes, mostly the movie just kind of drags on until we end up at the very predictable ending.
My overall rating! 4 / 10
points awarded for doing a lot with very little money
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How disappointing! Especially after seeing how well Parasite was. However, because this is over a decade ago, suffice to say, they have grown. :)
In more ways than one. Hopefully, whatever comes down the line next in much the same pairing, we will get surprised once again.
Thanks for the awesome reviews.
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I'm not exactly a Korean movie fan. Perhaps it's because I haven't actually watched that many of them but Parasite really threw them into the spotlight. I'll give this one a shot I guess. No harm in trying.
well actually the idea was to NOT see this one. There are lots of K-films that are much better than this one
I watched The Host many years ago, and I quite enjoyed it. Never really cared much for the special effects, I think primarily down to the fact that there isn't a lot of 'monster' screen-time.
I found its narrative to be more compelling than it seems: a regular family is highly affected by an international government performing shady experiments. It goes on to show ways in which international governments even essentially invade other countries and treat the natives like shit, showing no interest in their well-being but generally attempting to take control for their own agendas.
The regular family, in the film, just gives the perspective of ordinary citizens and the terrors they face as a result.
in that regard it has something in common with Parasite.
I am guessing that was a scene from the movie? It does look pretty bad. I think the really scary films are the ones where you don't ever quite see the baddie. I remember we were watching a movie and I can't remember the name now. It was the one where the tooth fairy was the baddie and it was pretty scary up until the point where they actually showed the "ghost", then it was just dumb. I think it was "Darkness Falls".
well, even in horror films I appreciate some sort of twist instead of just jump scares or a large ominous monster like they have in this one. Scream comes to mind as something i found quite innovative... they took all we knew about horror films and turned it on its head. You never knew what was coming next in that thing.
Ha! One of the critics said it was "On par with Jaws." I hate it when the plot is predictable and you know exactly what's going to happen. I saw that Train To Busan was on Netflix, is that good?
oh man, see Train to Busan .... at first it just appears to be a zombie movie but it is so much more than that. It's one of my all time favorite Korean films.
Oh good, I'm always looking for good movies on Netflix, thanks gooddream!