Gosa

Seeing how this movie did so well in Korean box office, I thought it would be pretty good. It's not really a horror flick, but sort of works like the "Saw" movies except not the victims but the students that still hasn't been kidnapped yet has to solve the puzzles in order to save there classmate. My guess is that there wasn't many Korean horror movies released during that year, and since Asians tends to crave horror flicks it did so well. Although the premise is pretty well done, none of the characters seem to stand out much and you just don't care who lives and who dies. None of them were believable and the character decisions don't make sense sometimes, there just isn't any logic. Plus everything about this movie seems to be rushed, especially the ending, the twist also wasn't that shocking or original. But what annoyed me the most was the cliché, it's safe to be in one area but a person can take it anymore or goes off to investigate when the person they leave behind is the one that really needs help, which tends to get annoying since it gets used way too much in this. Although I ain't really looking forward to the sequel to this, I hope it's better than this although sequels tend to suck.

5.3/10

"Death Bell" is a South Korean high school horror movie released in 2008. It includes lots of slasher elements, a few minor mystery passages that can be seen as a nod to many popular Asian ghost movies but also several twisted enigmas that the surviving pupils and teachers have to resolve to save those who are kidnapped one by one by a vengeful mind. Imagine a mixture of the "Yeogo Goedam" series and "Saw".

The problem I have with this movie is not that it doesn't introduce anything new to the genre. A solid high school slasher flick like "4th Period Mystery" can be quite entertaining without being innovative. This movie takes too much time to kick the story off. The first twenty minutes don't even introduce you adequately to the story. The real reasons behind what happens in this movie are shown later in a few rushed flashbacks. The opening minutes introduce you to many unimportant secondary characters.

In fact, there are so many pupils running around that it's a little bit hard to realize who is who. After twenty lame minutes, pupils are suddenly kidnapped and murdered at such a high speed that you might soon feel confused about who is still alive, who has been kidnapped and who is about to be murdered.

Then we have the enigmas. Each time a pupil is about to be tortured to death, a madman presents the surviving crowd an enigma they have to solve at time to save their kidnapped colleagues. Sometimes the survivors even solve the enigmas but that doesn't keep the killer from continuing his slaughter which is pretty lame as the challenges feel somewhat useless. No matter if you solve the enigmas or not, the killer continues to spread death and terror until the very end of the movie.

The enigmas are also rather hard to follow. The first enigma has something to do with mathematics but the solution is never shown to the viewers. For the second enigma, the survivors have to create a sentence which is very hard to understand. I neither understand the sense behind the sentence nor the way the survivors manage to compose it in the end. The other enigmas are a little bit easier to understand but not very interesting as well. The movie should have spent some more time on explaining the enigmas and their more or less associated traps as it is the case in movies like "Mindhunters".

The ending of the movie is rather intriguing and includes a minor twist. Some people felt disappointed by it, others thought it was great and to me it was just okay. At least, it ended this short movie on a rather high note.

Fans of high school horror movies or slasher films can try this movie out. It's nothing groundbreaking but surely entertaining enough if you don't want to watch your "Scream" movies over and over again. It's decently entertaining but only an average horror movie, especially if we compare this to other unique and stunning South Korean horror movies like "A Tale Of Two Sisters", "Bedevilled" or "I Saw The Devil" for example. But for what it is, it's an acceptable fast food horror flicks with a few Korean pop stars acting in here.

Meanwhile it's been more than three months since I watched "Death Bell" at the Belgian Festival of Fantastic Films, but for some reason it must have escaped everyone's attention here at IMDb, because the film didn't receive its very own page until now. Since it's been quite long, and since I watched a whole lot of other crap in the meantime, I'm glad I took some notes and wrote down impressions after seeing the film, otherwise I'm afraid I wouldn't have remembered that much. By that I certainly don't mean that "Death Bell" is a bad film. Quite the contrary, it's a very amusing horror flick with exhilarating gore and a dazzling fast pace. Originality, however, isn't the film's biggest trump as it borrows plot ideas and stylistic elements from various other and more famous horror movies. "Death Bell" somewhat describes itself as "Saw" meets "Battle Royale", with a bunch of high school students and their teachers desperately trying to escape the imaginative death traps of a maniacal killer. Twenty of the most intelligent, but also sickly competitive and pompous students of a prominent Seoul high school attend a special exam held on a Saturday. Suddenly classical music plays through the speakers and the television monitor displays images of one missing student trapped in an aquarium slowly filling up with water. The exits are sealed, the contact with the outside world is cut off and the group finds themselves subjected to the lethal and perverted games of a deranged killer. But who is he and what are his motives?

Co-writer and director Chang (who was a guest at the festival and appears to be incredibly young) has obviously watched and studied a whole lot of contemporary popular horror movies and knows exactly what it takes to please a large crowd of fans. The death traps are complex and implausible – like the ones in all the "Saw" movies – but they definitely guarantee extended moments of suspense and a lot of gruesome bloodshed. The make-up and sound effects are fantastic, so if you have the opportunity to see this film in a theater or with luxurious home cinema equipment, you definitely will be overwhelmed. The characters are typical Asian high school students; like they appear in numerous movies, but the film does it best to provide as many backgrounds and little personality details that are also relevant. Considering the subject matter, and exactly like "Saw", the script is often incoherent and extremely implausible (example: how could one individual plan such a hi- tech and accurate large-scaled massacre) but you easily are willing to overlook that thanks to the entertainment value. The identity of the killer and his reasons are quite predictable as well, but then again, this is a film that primarily relies on inventive shocks and outrageous gore.

A very slow opening, but worth to wait it through. Has unite a good submersion into the world. After, the first half an hour caught myself on a thought comparing it to the "saw" movie series. On a scare scale it is 1/5, however it provides an entertaining experience with a really creative take. Throughout the watch kept me tense, wheather the nature of the so called "evil" is superstitious or not. Characters are generically written, but it organically blends in with the setting of the movie and overall atmosphere. Important to remember that it was released in 2008 and it stood the test of time.

This is supposed to be a horror movie but it's not really scary. It has some suspense however which can make it worth watching and it's more like a gory slasher similar to "Scream" than a ghost story. Having said that I'm not excluding any ghostly presence in the movie. It's simply up to you to find out. The actors are good, at least the main characters but the rest is just average.

The big disappointment comes later in the movie when the director is trying to tie everything together. The script just fails to make a trustworthy impression and you are suddenly very aware that you are only watching a movie when the characters starts behaving in weird ways and doesn't act at all how you would expect them to in their current situation.

Unexpected events are good in horror movies but not in this case, where it's only confusing but like I said in the beginning, the suspense is there so it's not really a bad movie.