Peiseu

"Face" is a detective story/murder mystery with supernatural elements and a few of the images used in recent Japanese and Korean horror movies. The protagonist works with the police reconstruction the appearance of murder victims from fragmentary skeletal remains including a few recently that have had all the soft tissue burned away with acid.

His daughter is recovering very slowly from a heart transplant and we see (but the characters don't) that some of the hearts available for transplant into patients with complications may have been harvested by other than ethical means

A killer is kidnapping, mutilating, and melting young women. The police are baffled. Forensic sculptor Hyeon-Min (Hyeon-Jun Shin) is expected to add a face to the skull of the latest victim.

The trouble is that Hyeon-Min has had enough. With his wife dead, and his daughter in the hospital, he just wants to retire. Unfortunately for him, his latest partner won't stop pushing him. Then, there's also the ghost that haunts Hyeon-Min, and the nightmares, and the strange sounds in his head!

FACE is another wonderfully creepy ghost story from South Korea. It's filled with mystery, suspense, and supernatural terror. Highly recommended...

The very well acted South Korean supernatural thriller tells the story of Hyun-min an expert in facial reconstruction. His expertise is used by the police to help give faces to murder victims who have long reverted to skeletons. He reluctantly helps with a case that seems to be the work of a serial killer but how and why does it tie into his daughter, who is sick after having a heart transplant? What is an apparition trying to steer him to? Can Hyun-min solve the murder and save his daughter…

A slick drama with supernatural overtones is at the heart of this thriller. A bit of a twist in the end too, which I must say I wasn't expecting when it came out of left field. Excellent acting and an interesting story are punctuated by a good sound design that helps to creep you out when the time is right.

Face a solid and engaging thriller with a few creepy moments. The overall atmosphere is a bit weak since the scares are a little bit sparse and far apart.

Let's face it (no pun intended) the best and most influential horror films from the start of 21st century came from Asia, mostly Japan and more recently Korea. Of course the influences aren't just on our own domestic horror films but on other Asian films as well. Films like Korea's FACE for example, which is really a second tier film but still one worth seeing, especially given the large selection of crap that hovers dangerously nearby on the DVD shelves as a genre fan goes out to rent or more riskily buy a horror film to watch. Given those options, I'd say this is more of a rental.

I stay away from plot synopsis in reviews as much as possible, but the one on this box is perhaps typically of this distributor, Tartan, not really what the film is about. The focus here is on a forensic facial reconstruction worker whose daughter he, and we, quickly believe has been given a transplanted heart from a donor who is really a victim of a serial killer. This premise is an excuse to see the ghost crawling on a ceiling and peeking out through the now overly familiar long straight black hair with its overly familiar blood red eyes. One scene has the little girl open her closet and act afraid, it really looks like she has a THE GRUDGE poster in her closet, it's that much alike. For all the very professionally done and controlled style of the movie and the well timed scares, the scares themselves are now mostly been-there-done-that in other Asian films. And every scene in the first third of the movie is about some kind of scare or another.

Then the movie becomes more about the mystery of who is the killer and the scares mostly go away. The wrap up of the killer's identity is a typical and slightly confused rush job. There are too many early scenes that end in a jump and too few later on for the film's own good. The well acted and ultimately important romantic subplot is fine other than the fact that the set up for it is ridiculous, really a cliche, in this case from American films, of the good natured but not too bright female assistant/side kick who eventually charms our hero into caring for her despite the fact she has no reason to be there in the first place.

First time feature director Hyun has done numerous short films and says in his interview that he doesn't see this as being any different than those. Well, yes and no, he doesn't know how to pace a feature yet, though this one isn't overlong at 88 minutes.

For a film about the rarely used and slightly controversial procedure of basically sculpting a clay face over a skull in an attempt to identify the victim, it doesn't do enough with the procedure. Where is the scene with the clay face talking or bleeding or melting? Instead we cutaway to the always exciting (not) nearby computer monitors where the CG image of the head can spin around (you see it looks more 3D if it spins around) as it has skin magically morph onto it, etc. There were opportunities here to do more original and specific scares related to the premise, than the end result shows.

Director Hyun also reveals in a rather poorly shot interview (which ends abruptly) that his intentions with this film weren't to make a brutal ghost film but a more human one. He does succeed at this, he does not however, despite his claims in the same interview, succeed at fresh horror and ghost imagery. It almost seems like perhaps someone else "got to" the film after he did, as he speaks about imagery that is not in the finished film. A bit more of this imagery is seen in two trailers (one hidden as an Easter Egg) that might have helped overcome the GRUDGE/RING elements that pull this otherwise worthy film down a notch.

The image on the cover art is striking, more so than the actual appearance of the face in FACE. Tartan's DVD presentation is all pro (though for an Asian Extreme movie there isn't much in it gore wise or exploitation wise to call extreme) with moving menu pages and the always welcome DTS as a sound option. The three separate interviews with cast, crew, director may not be action packed but they are also mostly hype free and that alone is kind of refreshing and a nice inclusion.

The surround sound is used effectively if not perhaps as much as it could have been. The music score is effective if unmemorable the same can be said of the actors' performances. FACE is a real film, not a pandering festival of ineptitude like the last 5 horror rentals I've seen. There is one interesting ghost appearance involving a type of split screen effect that you can see works even better in the trailer. Again, I wonder who's responsible for some of the final edit choices in the film, I get the feeling it could have worked better than it does.

Then again, this is still much better than most of what's out there to choose from and better than many American remakes and films "inspired" by Asia's leadership in the field.

Two thirds of the predictions I made six minutes into Face were proved accurate by the end of the feature. In that sense, predictability is something this film suffers from, with other aspects of the film's conclusion been foreseen over the course of the plot. However, in no way does this hamper the film's entertaining features.

Dr. Yoon (Suk-hwan Ahn) has recently completed a heart transplant on young Lee-jin (Ye-rin Han) who is Beta-allergic, meaning the operation was more difficult when in contrast with other patients. Appearing successful, Lee-jin's father, Lee Hyeon-min (Hyeon-jin Shin), who works as a facial reconstruction expert, resigns his post in order to spend more time with his daughter.

His hope for some quality father-daughter time is shattered though when his former boss, without his permission, forces him to become a part of an ongoing case. Jeong Seon-yeong (Yuh-ah Song), a recent addition to the institute Lee used to work for, arrives with a skull connected to a murder case. Someone is prowling the streets, killing women, and using an acidic substance to dispose of their bodies. The only way to stop this unidentified killer, is to put a face to his victim.

Originally adamant he will not participate, Lee finds himself haunted by the ghost of the victim, and is torn between been a good father, and fulfilling this final job. With Jeong's assistance he begins to put a face to the mystery, and with every new reconstruction, they get closer to revealing the victim - and their killer.

In the beginning, Face provides the audience with what can only be described as an overdose of horror, this plentiful assortment becoming less prominent as the film progresses. The jump scares are not entirely terrifying, but will certainly assist in keeping you rooted to the spot, despite a number of them been cliché Asian horror tropes.

What makes Face so rewarding is the depth provided to the central characters. The chemistry between Lee and Jeong is a joy to watch, and you cannot help but hope for a happy conclusion between them. Their characterization however comes at the expense that other individuals, including Detective Seo (Seung-wook Kim), who is the lead investigator on the case, are not provided the same thorough level of depth.

The same can be said for Lee-jin, and though there is no doubt that Lee loves his daughter, there are moments in the film when there is no mention of her for a substantial period of time. Face is a movie with several plots occurring simultaneously, and though everything is effectively intertwined, this movie is evident that when film developer's are dealing with more than a couple of ideas, some inevitably remain in the background for a majority of the feature.

The filmmaker's use of revealing past events to the audience over the course of the story is a technique similarly used in other Asian horror features, and like some of them, it can occasionally become difficult to separate history from the present, though everything succinctly comes together in the end.

Though Face is a movie constructed from ideas that are not uniquely imaginative, the plot continuously keeps your interest, and the beautifully sad conclusion will truly leave you feeling impressed.