The summer of 2011 produced three major K-horrors. I’ve already had a chance to see and
review the interesting but butchered
White: The Curse of the Melody from the
indie cineastes behind
Anti Gas Skin (2010) and the limp and lethargic
The Cat. Both of those films had a powerful and
mercurial factor going for them, potential.
White, with its mix of cult pedigree filmmakers, strong
production values, and K-pop setting, was not the sum of its promising
parts. I learnt after writing
about it that a first cut was thrown out by the studio and Kim Gok and Kim Sun
were forced to reshoot the film, likely lobotomizing it in the process. I would love to get my hands on that
first cut, perhaps it delivered on that potential?
The Cat was a return to supernatural felines for Korean
cinema, which have long been a source of great horror. The buzz was there but the product was severely
lacking as the actors and filmmakers seemed to sleepwalk their way through it.
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| Aftermath of the opening bloodbath |
Ghastly, which I’m glad I was able to get my hands on just
before Halloween, was the final big K-horror release of the summer. However, at least in my eyes, it was
not saddled with any special expectations. It seemed pretty by the book but, judging by the trailer and
the shower scene that was made available online ahead of its release, it seemed
to have a little panache in the production department. The film has a great opening, a
disturbing, macabre sequence that leaves you with a lot of questions. Sadly, any cautious optimism I had was
dashed as the narrative presented itself as a prosaic variation on common
horror themes and tropes.
All the usual tricks are out in force in this one: the
haunted house; the freaky kid; the terrorised in bed dreams; the crawling,
decayed ghost hands on protagonist’s faces; the weird middle-aged neighbour who
is hiding something; and the creepy shaman grandmother in a mental institute
who knows the truth about the demon.
And that’s pretty much all this is, an excuse to go through the motions
but with some very attractive leads and fancy locations.
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| Sleepy dream scenes |
The film begins with a young boy waking up in the middle of
the night to find his father’s corpse at the bottom of the stairs and his
mother hacking her own feet off with a kitchen knife. The father’s brother-in-law is given custody of the
child. He, along with his wife and
sister-in-law, move into the enormous house. The child is prone to some bizarre behavior and soon the
sisters start having terrible nightmares. Meanwhile, a young detective goes
looking for the boy’s grandmother, who disappeared before the murders.
The most tedious problem with the film is that there are no
less than seven instances of the sisters dreaming about the child, with a
bloodied demon face, doing horrible things to them, including cutting off their
feet and stabbing out their eyes, which mostly take place in bed. Isn’t it obvious to the filmmakers that,
aside from how silly and bad for the narrative this repetitious device is, each
new version on the theme will dilute the potency of the scares? My eyeballs were doing loop-the-loops
by the third or fourth of these sequences. Such unimaginative filmmaking, surely they could figure out
another way to insert scares and violent imagery.
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| Freaky kid, yawn |
I can never quite understand in these films which feature
freaky children, how after so many ominous dreams and examples of plainly
demonic behaviour, they are treated like perfectly normal children. It’s always far too late when the
protagonists realise that something is wrong. I suppose this is how the formula works but I wouldn’t mind
seeing a few smart characters going up against these antagonists every once in
a while.
For the most part the film is well shot and the production
design and locations look great but the real problem seems to be the editing. A lot is badly or not explained and this
could be the result of scenes that didn’t work that were cut out, or it could
have been that it did not occur to the filmmakers that certain things needed
explanation. This is why you have
reshoots! Maybe they didn’t have
the money, or worse they didn’t care.
The little splices of violent imagery, another staple of the genre, were
poorly executed as well. It’s all
about timing and Ghastly is very uneven.
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| Homicide detective my foot |
While things start off okay and continue in a rather innocuous
fashion thereafter, the moment new elements start to appear the script begins
to unravel. Why is the husband
such an asshole? How come everyone
is acting so normal after such horrific events? What is the point of the depravity of the school scenes, how
does it fit in? How the hell is
this lithe 25-year-old model a homicide detective?
For a film that takes pains in its aesthetics and goes so
far as to reference revered horror classics such as Psycho (1960) and The
Shining (1980), Ghastly has nothing original to say or show us. Blood is spilt, some skin is flashed, shamanism
is thrown in, even pedophilia is alluded to for good measure, but all we’re
left with is a series of discordant elements and disconnected scenes, though at
77 minutes, at least it’s mercifully short.
