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Janghwa, Hongryeon (2003)
The most beautiful horror movie ever made.
The spoiler I have added is a tiny one.
Once, there was a movie festival in the town where I live and in this festival there was a Horror Movie Night that I felt compelled to go to. I have loved horror movies since I was little and I can honestly say I've watched every movie in the genre that I've got my hands on. Poor ones as well as the good.
Back to that night: there was one movie that started out as a drama, and I relaxed into my seat after a couple of movies before that, that gave me quite a fright. The colours were beautiful, the patterns on the walls, blankets, and cushions alone seemed hand-picked to fit into a theme as if every detail had been painstakingly planned. The music and the sounds along with the actors gave me a slowly growing feeling of unease, but even so, I was still quite calm and thought it would be a sweet and dark story with a touch of a thriller. How truly wrong I was.
The little scene that tipped me over, in the midst of all this beauty, was something as simple as a hand creeping around a door frame. My heart dropped into my stomach and it had been a long while since I had felt such dread. Such a little detail and yet it terrified me! As the story unwound, I felt my skin crawling, and the fact that the places where there was REAL horror were so few, I could never relax. I expected ghosts around every corner and my own imagination ran wild.
That is the sign of a true horror movie: your own thoughts do half the work. There is no need for monsters and gore there is only a need for a 'mood' that catches you constantly unawares.
Add to this that the story itself is brilliant and keeps you on your toes. You are forced to concentrate on everything because everything is poignant. There is not a moment when your mind can slip into dumb-fun mode and that makes the movie all that much more frightening.
The girl sitting next to me - not someone I knew - started crying halfway through and her boyfriend had to follow her out of the theatre.
Along with The Shining, The Exorcist and The Changeling, Janghwa, Hongryeon stands as my favourite horror movie of all time.
Hatchet (2006)
What on earth...
... made someone pick up this script and say, "hey, this sounds cool, let's do it!", without realising that there's not a single original thought anywhere to be found here? We have the hot-chicks-with-no-brains, the token black guy who is also a comic relief, the hot girl with brains teaming up with the nerd, and then your typical, deformed villain who is either a ghost or something else supernatural/sick and jumps out of the dark at choice moments. I could tick off the clichés as they came atumbling; knowing exactly what would happen at every twist and turn. There were only two ways the movie could have ended... and yes, there it is, predictable as well.
I understand that a lot of people find this a nice nod to the old-school slasher movies but I can't see how this would make it any better. A crappy homage to cool movies still makes for a bad flick. If the monster running through the woods, hacking down cliché characters is supposed to be classic then there are movies released every year to fit that bill... I fail to see how this is anything special. It is NOT clever, the jokes are cheap and the story all too obvious. The monster fails to frighten, the girls shake their boobs at the camera a few times too many and the death scenes are fairly ridiculous but not in the 'fun' way.
I usually LOVE to watch horror-made-comedy but in this case, the movie falls short in all respects. Next to Eragon, the worst movie I've seen this year.
Gabal (2005)
Better than most horror movies out there, but...
I am a long time horror-film fanatic. By this I mean, I watch every horror movie I come across, regardless of where it's from. I am a fond fan of everything from Tale of Two Sisters to Ils. And I suspected I would thoroughly enjoy this movie.
On the upside, Gabal has lovely music, it's wonderfully filmed,beautifully coloured, it has some exquisite scenes as far as artistry goes. The actors are good and there is, as someone might say, a certain special 'touch' here that makes the whole film worthwhile. It has surface-value.
On the downside, I was not the least bit frightened and at times, I thought the plot quite... ridiculous. I just couldn't buy into it regardless of all the other good points the movie had. I was sitting there, looking at these beautiful scenes and for the most part all that was going through my head, was "Well, it's certainly pretty... but..." It's not as if I'm sorry I watched it, it was interesting enough; it just didn't leave a mark on me. I'm not feeling the least bit scared, I'm not feeling particularly impressed, it's not bad enough to make me growl but it's certainly not good enough for a purr. I was hoping that the movie would be better than I felt it was. At least it's not an evil man-eating wig from Mars, I suppose.
I give it 7 out of 10 because I watched Hatchet (2006) last night and at this moment THAT movie has high enough score (6.9) to give me perspective - Gabal, while I did not like it so much, is wildly better than most of the Hollywood horror flicks out there that end up with a higher score.
Eragon (2006)
I wish it had been better.
The truth is it's probably the worst film of the year for me. I'm not sure what exactly I expected, but if I had known, I would much rather have stayed at home. I even found myself laughing - along with a good part of the audience - at inappropriate, serious moments and when I left the theatre, I felt dejected.
I'm sad to say I didn't even enjoy the visuals like I thought I would (being able to enjoy the digital effects can save even a poorly made movie for me). I found the dragon to be poorly designed and her expressions and movements to be cartoonish. I can see how they attempted to design her so that her face would seem 'human' enough that the audience would connect with her, but she simply wasn't believable to me. On a few occasions, she'd pose in a convincing way and from a distance it would look like a well-made painting... but up close it seemed to me as if her scales should have reflected more light or had a different texture because they appeared painted upon her neck rather than part of her. I don't know what kind of budget they were working with, but the special effects seemed rushed, to me, with the notable exception of events that take place near the end.
As for the acting, there were two of my favourite actors in this movie, John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons and at the very least, I expected them to do an excellent job. I still love Malkovich but I've never before seen him deliver such a wooden, dispassionate performance, seeming more as if he wanted to get through his parts as quickly as possible than even bother to add a bit of genuine emotion into the part. Irons, on the other hand, did his best with what he got, but his dialogue was stilted by the somewhat cheesy lines and he couldn't really help that the script seemed poor. I applaud him for trying, though.
I haven't read the book, so I'm judging this solely as a stand-alone movie, and I have to say that to me, it's nowhere near good enough. The few highlights for me were the somewhat cute scenes in the beginning that made me think the movie would be better than it was, and a few nice views somewhere in the middle of the movie, and bits and pieces here and there, nowhere near enough to make me feel I got my money's worth.
I can't recommend this to anyone, whether you've read the books or not.