Jang-san-beom

A weird mystery horror thriller that tries its best but doesn't deliver, watch once if nothing else is on.

Traveling into the wilderness, a troubled family trying to heal itself from a series of tragedies finds that the reclusive girl they found in the woods nearby leads them into a series of confrontations with a deadly ghost that can mimic human voices and try to protect themselves.

This was quite the fun if somewhat flawed effort. What really works nicely for this one is the fact that it manages to really exploit the concept of its central ghostly figure. This one offers up an entirely novel and chilling ghost that has a great backstory and gets to employ a rather unique concept of mimicking human sound and voices to great effect throughout here which is quite intriguing when it starts to attack. This idea creates a rather enjoyable premise as this goes on where the physical limitations it shows, as the blurry vision and onset of hearing loss, combine together into a truly chilling effort. This in turns leads into the strong action scenes that emerge from this setup. The opening scene showing the couple confronting the creature inside the cave at the side of the forest, complete with the attack on the lone victim, serves as a nice warm-up to the later scenes of the family sensing the spirit around them in places like closets or bathrooms which gives this one enough of a horror feel that it maintains that sense of dread leading nicely into the stellar finale. Taking place within the creature's underground cave home, the freakiness experienced in the setting gives way to the series of confrontations and escapes from that titular ghost, utilizing the strong series of battles in the caves alongside the use of various objects around them to give this a highly intriguing and fun finale. Alongside the great look of the ghost, these here hold it up over it's few obvious flaws. The biggest issue here is the overall sense of blandness that overcomes a majority of the film. Very little happens here that actually affects the family in the film, as things continually build involving the girl which is barely acknowledged within here in order to focus on the other storylines that aren't even all that well-developed anyway. Going from the idea of the troubled family with the mother's mental issues and their own troubling nature regarding the missing child all tend to get brought up yet then routinely ignored which is really troubling. There are several storylines brought out of this setup, as in how the grandmother knows the girls' history or the police investigations into the disappearances which is brought up and then all but ignored which just doesn't do much overall here since this relies mostly on familiar tropes in their place. These here really hold this one down.

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

This movie feels like it's been edited to the bone - there are a bunch of unrelated story elements which pop up throughout, yet go nowhere, and instead of complementing the plot, they just muddy the waters and make the story confusing. Some characters are introduced with apparently important information to reveal, but with absolutely no context as to how they know what they do, or why other characters should even listen to them. Characters affected by the mimic can experience various physical responses, one of which seems quite dire, but the experience just ends as if incomplete and leaves you wondering what happened to the character afterwards.

The most definitive element of the film is the acting of the young girl playing the mimic. She's hard not to like, making the viewer's response conflicting with the scenes that follow, and engaging you to wonder what she will do next. Unfortunately though, the constant plot holes and character actions which simply don't make sense detract from this being anything other than a forgettable horror flick.

Caught this on TV just past midnight, and was watching with dim lighting, which definitely set the ambience. There are some horror movie clichés and definitely plot holes, but overall it's a pretty decent and entertaining film, just don't go in expecting award winning, complex writing & characters. I found the acting, atmosphere and cinematography to be quite decent. There are intense and scary moments, and the make-up is pretty good, especially on the Tiger, who's popping out from every single angle. The girl is also pretty freaky when you think about it. As others have noted, her innocence is what makes it her scary. I recommend it if you have some spare time and like Asian horror movies.

I have a soft spot for Asian horror films. While the movie does move at a slow pace, it does continually build suspense. Sure, there are some clichés in the movie, but a positive benefit is that the movie is without jump scares. Some viewers might find the ending to be "infuriating" as it defers from a traditional feel good ending, but let's be honest here. Most horror movies involve regular people dealing with grief or trauma while simultaneously battling supernatural entities. The movie is ultimately about a woman dealing with grief and trying to keep her family together. The main characters household is charitable to a deadly fault. Ultimately, the woman's grief defies all rational logic as she is continuously warned about the impending perils she's facing. The concept of a mimic, an entity that mirrors the voice of a loved one, may not be the most innovative monster. However, the movie portrays the creature in an interesting way. If you're a fan of Asian movies that deal with human trauma and the supernatural, this may be a good watch for you. One word of caution, this is a horror movie and horror protagonist always make dumb mistakes. The cinematography was great, the acting was believable, but there were no memorable scores or music to really drive it home. Ultimately, I think it's worth a watch if you don't mind a slow build up.