Go-hyang-i: Jook-eum-eul bo-neun doo gae-eui noon

Taking on a strange Persian cat, a troubled woman begins to find that the series of strange events surrounding her and her friends is related to a mysterious cat that she sold in a pet shop and must find the cause of the events before they succumb to its power.

This one wasn't all that bad of an effort. What this one really gets right is the rather enjoyable and overly impressive amount of accidental deaths featured here which really signify her being haunted. The fact that this one pretty early on features the idea that the woman is tormented, there's a great deal of fun to be had here with the changeover in the animals' behavior around her from the way the cats suddenly begin to cower away in fear and start viciously hissing at her which is quite nicely established here by being such a change of pace compared to previous interactions she's had with the animals that it becomes worthy of mention. Other great stuff includes the work of the ghosts in how they're targeting others around her, which includes some rather fun times with the initial elevator encounter that starts it all to the rather freaky sequence in the bedroom of the ghost emerging from the closet which becomes part of the big payoff at the hospital that is rather good. Given that the majority of this is carried off with the police investigation which brings about a lot of great stuff as well from the discovery of the elevator victims' fate to the individual hauntings threatening the different officers involved who are brought onto the case who suffer some really brutal fates themselves. From being trapped in the elevator shaft to finding themselves face-to- face with the ghost in the basement furnace and the one detective coming across the girl alone in the storage room, there's plenty of solid scares to work off of while still maintaining a solid enough mystery that needs to be investigated themselves which is a nice enough story. Going alongside this with the rather creepy ghost with the blackened skin and utterly creepy cat eyes the film does have a lot to really like here even if it does have a few flaws. The film's biggest issue is the fact that this one is so utterly played out and repetitive in it's dishing out of scares that it really feels way too familiar quite easily. This one really falls on the trapped character alone in a room only to find themselves beset by loud noises or startling light and then meeting up with the killer ghost which sounds decent enough for the most part if it didn't run through a vast majority of these tricks elsewhere. These scenes are a rather troubling rehash of a lot of genre efforts and it doesn't do a whole lot of interesting things with these tactics to really stand out. The last flaw here is the rather troubling reasons why the girl ends up with the cat in the first place as there's no real logical reason why they place the cat in her possession when she's unrelated to her and had no connection at all other than grooming the animal so it's pretty contrived how the murders here actually get started. Otherwise, this one was quite decent.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language, children-in-jeopardy and strong animal abuse.

Ummm.....most of the people who die in this movie deserved to die. I was too afraid of what I would find if I searched animal abuse in Asian movies so I didn't bother but eff man... This movie is not for cat/animal lovers. I would have given it a better rating if I wasn't so thrown off with how they used the animals.

Cats are sinister creatures in horror tales. And director Byun did a good job in exploiting this matter in this film. The cat related shocks are combined with more traditional Asian ghost film motifs, with a bob-haired child ghost providing most of the scares and sudden jump frights. There are also a few gruesome moments and effective jolts scattered throughout. A couple of neatly staged mass feline attack sequences and the ghost getting the chance to use some nasty looking face shredding claws. All of this works pretty well. Overall, this is a beautiful K-Horror. Expect nothing new or exceptional. The story was pretty simple & decently plotted with a typical Asian flavor. Loved it.

With a bland title like The Cat (with a Korean subtitle as funky as "Two Eyes See Death" according to Google Translate), it just about signals how blasé horror films can be these days especially when they dip into the generic bag of scary tricks to assemble a horror feature film by stringing together a series of cheap jump scares, and then finding an excuse to weave a narrative around the usual mystery cum unfinished business cum body to be found and exorcised type of storyline.

Granted the premise and set up is something begging to be done, and done it is with this Korean film, otherwise we can make a film called The Dog and have the dog howl at every suspenseful instance to signal some supernatural presence, which doesn't really work that well. Cats usually have this connotation to witchcraft and its eyes being quite creepy to look at especially in some form of darkness, so in the animal itself you have a ready made plot device in which to weave a narrative around. Here the chief pussycat called Silky belongs to a plump woman who was found dead in the lift to her apartment, and for reasons only cat lovers can identify with, So-Yeon (Park Min-Young to wide-eyed perfection) who worked on and groomed the animal before its owner's demise, got stuck with the feline.

As if one warning isn't enough, expect to see a whole slew of bodies turning up, usually accompanied by the shadowy appearance of a little girl, played by Kim Ye-Ron, whose sister Kim Sae-Ron had in recent years become a child acting force to be reckoned with in films like A Brand New Life and The Man From Nowhere. I'd wonder what made her sister take this path early in her career being decked out in face paint and acting all creepy, but herein lies the expected back story as to why and how this little girl and her cat, are out there trying to spook and become avenging angels against all cat abusers, which in a way seemed noble enough a reason to do what they did.

Ultimately writer-director Byun Seung-Wook does little except to showcase that he's as capable as other directors before him who have executed the usual suspense build up, and the typical jump scares to make audiences squeal, complete with sudden loud noises, light and shadow play, and tapping upon the expertise of makeup artists who applied the feline face of death look which is inspiration for anyone wondering just how to dress up during this year's Halloween. And to make matters worse, without the numerical advantage in getting characters bumped off, or have random bodies appear just to spook, The Cat would betray that it's actually all of a short film only, being extrapolated just because of its repetitive scare tactics to introduce another dead body under extraordinary circumstances.

The Cat will thrill anyone who hasn't seen his or her fair share of Asian horror films, otherwise to horror fanatics, this is yet another film exercise for the fimmaker to chalk up a genre film under his belt. This is one weak pussy after all.

There was a time when everybody was looking forward for the new South-Korean horror or Japanese flick or Eastern horror. We all remembered how The Grudge and The Ring did showed us something new. But of course after a while you have seen it all. And I am a bit fed up with that genre. It's always the same, some creepy white faced girl coming out of the dark with black eyes and weird movements. Here it's the same story only the girl has short black hair instead of long hair and has cat eyes instead of the black eyes.

The originality was the fact that they used real cats all over this flick and that must have been a hell of a time to shoot. But it clocked in way too long. There wasn't that much going on and it really never was that scary after all. It was even low on gore or blood.

I guess I must have seen too many of these kind of flicks that I have seen enough. Sadly I didn't enjoyed it. Watch it for the cats alone but don't be bothered by the story.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Story 2/5 Effects 2/5 Comedy 0/5