Dead Friend

Tartan's new release of Ryeong, A.k.a. The Ghost is not one of their better releases. In fact, I found The Ghost to be one of the worst Asian ghost stories I've seen in awhile. This is not to say that Ghost is necessarily a bad film, it just doesn't offer anything new to jaded horror viewers, and seems like a hodge-podge of several prior successful Asian horror films, Chiefly, The Ring, Ju-On, Shutter, and Dark Water.

The Ghost tells the story of Ji-Won, a young student who is afflicted with amnesia. She is completely unaware of her prior life, including an incident which sets up the haunting of Ji-Won by a long-haired ghost girl. As her friends start to die off, she decides to investigate the event that led to the deaths of her friends. Peeling back the layers of her subconscious, she slowly unravels clues to her past, which inevitably lead to a giant plot-twist, which I saw coming at about 20 minutes into the film.

If it sounds like something you've seen before, that's because it is. The Ghost adds nothing new to the K-Horror genre and heavily borrows (Or steals) from past K and J-Horror successes. In fact, even some of the score was lifted from The Shutter (not to mention the plot)! The sad thing is that the film isn't all that bad. The Ghost is somewhat creepy, there are some decent scares, the pacing is good, and the story is decent. But to those of us familiar with Asia Horror, it's just more of the same. If The Ghost had been made before such films as The Ring or Dark Water, it would probably be regarded as a great entry into the K-Horror genre. Alas, it was made after, and offers nothing new, but retreads of familiar territory.

If your a fan of K-Horror and are looking for something to pass time until the next great Horror flick comes out, or if you like to collect K-Horror than check it out. If your the occasional Asian horror flick viewer, save your time. You've seen it all before.

My Rating 4.5 out of 10. The Ghost delivers nothing that I hadn't seen before. It's predictable, and forgettable.

The story Min Ji-won is suffering from amnesia and being haunted by weird visions.

When she meets her former high school friend Oh Yu, she receives a picture of her high school group of friends: Kim who had recently died.

Anyone who likes Asian Horror movies, Will love this movie, I for one did, yes this movie as another dead girl with long black hair, killing off people, it not gory but it still very creepy.

This movie had the perfect story and there really good creepy scene that will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

I Give this 7/10

I didn't think I would ever say this, I enjoyed this more then I enjoyed Ringu.

I had high expectations going into this. I love ghost stories and I love Asian horror. After recently seeing A Tale of Two Sisters (another Korean ghost/horror movie) and loving it I thought this would be scary, intelligent and original. However, this was far from original, in fact, it was a mix-up of Ju-On: The Grudge and Dark Water. The ghost looked like a mixture of Sadako from (Ring) and Kayako (Ju-On) and the water element has been used before in Ring and Dark Water. The director does manage to conjure up some atmosphere and an interesting enough story to keep the movie going but it's not enough to disguise the many stolen elements (and scenes!) The acting wasn't anything spectacular and the score sounded very familiar to The Grudge's. The ending was a surprise, and a good one at that. It caught me unaware and it did make me think a bit after. Overall it seems the good and the bad outweighed each other and the movie for me was just average. Atmospheric and interesting enough to keep me watching but too unoriginal for my liking.

2½/5

A good Korean horror with a number of surprising twists and turns. Unlike some of the corny ghost movies you may have seen before, this one takes "ghosts" up a step. I don't want to spoil the movie for you because it's worth watching but I'll briefly explain it. Its about a girl called Ji-Won who for some reason has suffered from amnesia (you will find out why later in the film.) She finds out three people she somehow knows are being killed off by an unforgiving ghost. But you will have to carefully watch any flashbacks that are shown during the movieto fully understand it. Expect to have to watch it twice. An unraveling ghost story involving sadness, jealousy and revenge. If you liked The Ring and The Grudge then you will probably like this.

I received this Corean film for free when I purchased a bunch of other titles from YesAsia.com. I didn't really want it, but every time I deleted a free title, this one would pop up. Eventually, I consented to receive this one for free.

This is a horror film, as you can tell from the title, and is not related to the U.S. film bearing the same name. The setup is this: There's an amnesiac woman who starts seeing funny things. People who she used to know start to wind up dead. Spooky goings on, I say. Spooky.

Personally, I wasn't terribly frightened during the course of the film, although the jump-scares were sometimes effective, but at other times failed to startle me. The central conceit of the film (the amnesia) is a little silly, but I suppose that's what you deal with in horror films. In this one, it allows the film to be a mystery as well, as the young woman tries to recollect the past. The end conceits are a little forced and a bit hard to buy, personally, but it does help the film to be a little bit more than a total genre knockoff.

Unfortunately, the film still ends up being less than impressive. The acting isn't terrible and the overall direction is easy to take in. It's just that the story is ho-hum. I suppose you could do a lot worse; this is mildly entertaining stuff. 6/10.