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.

Like other horror movies this one has symbolism in it, which isn't a bad thing if you are willing to accept that. If your going into the movie to expect jump scares and what not, that isn't the main point of this movie. The main focus is a family that is still suffering from the loss of their little boy. Specifically the mother, who can't move on with her life, constantly looking for her son and one simple thing ends up easily setting her off a number of times. It's a movie about dealing with grief and what can come from it when going unchecked. Personally, I enjoyed the movie for what it was. Though it was no top tier movie, I found my self caring for the family and hurt with then ending. I think it's at least worth a watch if your interested in getting into more Korean horror films.

I don't understand why this movie received such terrible reviews, I think it's a pretty solid horror. The plot IS fairly predictable and the final is pretty much what you expect but the atmosphere and the script are gloomy and the Korean folklore is very interesting. Not super innovative but very entertaining

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!