Death Bell 2 - Le Camp de la mort

The first "Death Bell" was a sleeper hit in the summer of 2008, so it is no surprise that the producers would attempt a sequel to cash in on the popularity of the first movie. But even the most die-hard fans of the low-budget original would probably be disappointed by this classic case of 'sequelitis', as "Death Bell 2" essentially rehashes the same premise with a different group of actors and substitutes gore for any kind of genuine horror.

Just as its predecessor, this is about a bunch of elite high-school students who discover themselves the targets of a mysterious slasher while back in school during the holidays cramming for their college entrance exams. Of course, given the demise of most of the characters from the first movie, there is no relation- cast or character-wise- between the two films.

Not that it matters really- director Yoo Sun Dong wastes little time in setting up the events leading up to that fateful night over which the subsequent killings unfold, including a prelude which tells of the death of the school's champion swimmer Tae-yeon (Yoon Seung Ah) whose vengeful spirit is but one of the red herrings the movie uses later on to distract you from the identity of the killer.

Indeed, when Tae-yeon turns out to be one of the most fleshed-out characters in the movie, you can guess how little time, effort or interest Yoo has in letting his audience get to know the other hapless teens. This only means that one probably feels little for any of the characters as they meet their demise, but again the purported highlight of the movie- as was the original- is its numerous gory killings.

Yet aside from one that takes place along the school corridor with the killer riding a motorbike with metal spokes on its wheels, the death traps lack the ingenuity that gore-hounds would have already seen in "Saw". Yoo also exhibits none of the dexterity in pacing and editing that his predecessor's director Chang had, and these scenes of carnage hardly excite or thrill. And no, dumping copious amounts of blood on screen isn't going to satisfy audiences already de-sensitised from the "Saws" and "Hostels" of Hollywood.

What ultimately saves the movie is its intriguing whodunit which throws suspicion on the culpability of some of Tae-yeon's fellow students in her death. The trio of screenwriters (Lee Gong-Joo, Lee Jeong-Hwa and Park Hye-Min) spend considerably more time and thought on this in the second half of the movie, and their attempt to find motive and motivation behind these killings turns out more compelling than one would expect. Ditto for the surprisingly heartfelt ending, which reaffirms that the dead don't always return just for vengeance.

Still, if the final reveal lacks surprise, it is no thanks to Yoo's directorial ineptness, clearly evident right from the start by his inability to build any sort of suspense in the story or engineer some clever inventive kills to hold his audience's attention. Never mind that "Death Bell 2" recycles its material from the original, what's most inexcusable is how it manages to do so even worse than its predecessor did.

First of all, I must start by saying that I was by no means a fan of the 2008 "Death Bell" (aka "Gosa") movie, so I didn't have much of any expectations for the 2010 sequel "Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp" (aka "Gosa 2"). But still, with it being a South Korean horror movie, and a movie that I hadn't already seen, I would eventually find myself sitting down to watch it.

And while this sequel was only slightly more enjoyable than the predecessor, this was by no means a memorable or particularly enjoyable movie. And it was mostly because of the storyline - or rather, lack thereof. The movie was build on a next-to-nothing storyline, and it was so simplistic that it was bordering on being boring.

Making up, or at least attempting to, for a lack of a proper storyline director Seon-Dong Yu put in enough gore to make you think that it would compensate for the lack of a proper storyline and script. Problem is, that it really didn't do that. While the movie does have a good amount of blood to it, it just felt like that was essentially all the movie offered.

They did, however, have a good enough ensemble of casted actors and actresses, just a shame that they virtually had nothing to work with.

There are far, far better South Korean horror movies readily available, if you enjoy those types of movies. So I can't really recommend that you sit down to watch "Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp". My rating of this 2010 sequel is a generous four out of ten stars.

I really enjoyed Death Bell 1, it was flawed but entertaining. If you want to rewatch that with the plot slightly changed and the action/saw-ish seens being rather boring than this movie is for you. I don't know how much they earned with this but I guess maybe part one was somewhat successful and they wanted to replicate that?

I gave it a 4 because there were scenes like the motorcycle one that I truly enjoyed, other than that it was kind of a waste of time.

There is a concept that to inherit the legacy of a successful movie and make a second part of the movie and call it a sequel or prequel. Usually, it is very difficult to make a good second movie because the new ideas have been seen before and probably the main characters are repeated as well. If you have a movie with a lot of material to talk about (Godfather 2) or the sequel is very long way from the original so you can introduce new materials (terminator 2), you may repeat the success. If you make the later parts of the movie very near the time of original, eventually, they will just look all the same such as Saw series. However, it is OK if you are a fan and people will follow whatever the story it was linking from before.

There are some really bad sequel movies like 'the return of living dead' movies; the series has no linkage whatsoever but it does not matter. Every movie has different theme and they were all low budget movie anyway, nobody really cares about them. I would say they are failures but not extremely bad cases.

Now, to the main topic, Gosa 2 is a movie with absolute no linkage to its predecessor. They both have about the same cast of characters just with the name changed. Several new ways of killing people but they are all similar. It is about murdering, revenge and supernatural, which is exactly the same tone as the first movie. Even the main actress, they again have chosen a singer/actress to take the leading role. I never understand why they do that. There are zero new surprising elements, zero new ideas, and even the characters are non-interesting. OK yeah, I was praising in the first movie, they had a pure school girl for a change, which is a fresher from watching models all the time in Western horror movies, now they added a model who is not even nude (just in swimming suit and got killed after couple scenes) in a brutal killing movie.

If you have not watch Gosa 1, I guess you may find this movie interesting. If you watch either one of them, don't watch another one. They are just the same movie repeated with different actors.

6 stars if you have not watch Gosa 1, 2 stars if you did. Average 4 stars.