Jang-san-beom

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.

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.

The Mimic was easy to anticipate and this is its biggest flaw. Had so many options, ways to scare, to intrigue and in the end to switch, yet all it did was being linear.

I would not call it abysmal, definitely not an work of art, I do believe Asian Horror cinema has much better movies out there to recommend, but if you are with some friends and all of you are bored, I guess you can give this one a try. Doesn't bring much new, execution is average, acting is ok but also it comes with all the clichees. I got bored at times, waiting for the finale and sadly that was a complete letdown.

Thus I feel like I should warn any potential viewer, The Mimic is not what you would expect, this being said, in a negative way of course. If you must, just know what to expect. Mostly disappointments.

Cheers!

I found The Mimic suspenseful. The jump scares were well executed and not overdone. The acting performances were on point. The camera cutting back and forth to things that are not there helps with the imagination. The creepy little girl was cuteness overload; I adored her. Does the film have clichés? Umm, yeah, pretty much 90% of horror films do. The closet, the mirrors, the voices etc. But here it was very well done and those tropes came in when appropriate in the story. Not just random occurrences like many B-horror films often use. So here they are effective in my opinion. I appreciated the film wasn't campy or riddled with CG. I think the reverse mirror image CG could have been better done.

This one is definitely worth streaming.

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