Ryeong

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.

A college student suffering from amnesia tries to figure out how she lost her memory, and what it is she can't remember. She tries in vain to get help from her friends, even though they seem to know something. The closer she gets to the truth, the more it appears that her past could be more devastating than she could ever imagine.

THE GHOST (aka: DEAD FRIEND) is a ghoulish, supernatural mystery from South Korea. Although it does venture into Japanese horror territory -vengeful, long, black-haired specter- there's enough originality and good storytelling to outweigh any overly familiar images. The final revelation is definitely satisfying...

The teenager Min Ji-won (Ha-Neul Kim) is suffering from amnesia and being haunted by weird visions. When she meets her former high school friend Oh Yu-jeong (Hie-ju Jeon), she receives a picture of her high school group of friends: Kim Eun-seo (Bin), who had recently died; Shin Mi-kyeong (Yi Shin), who is in the hospital and Eun-jeong (Yun-ji Lee). Ji-won questions who took the picture, and when she visits her former friends, she recalls Han Su-in (Sang-mi Nam), a girl that was badly treated and humiliated by their group, disclosing her past and the fate of Su-in and finding a scary hidden truth.

"The Ghost" is a creepy and scary movie, but like other Asian horror movies (for example, "The Tale of the Twin Sisters" or "Rinne"), has a complex, confused and intriguing twist in the end. My first difficulty was to associate the names of the characters performed by the gorgeous actresses with their faces. I repeated the first chapters three times to make this association. When Ji-won meets her mother in the end unraveling the mystery, I repeated three or four times to clarify the twist. If I were in the movie theater, I would not have the chance of rewinding and understanding the plot. But Asian horror movie is my favorite genre and I liked this film a lot, and I startled many times, especially with the scary atmosphere and the soundtrack. This is the type of movie that deserves to be watched at least two times. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

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.