Mooseo-woon-iyagi

Korean movies get worse and worse. When were the days they are actually "watchable"? At least 10 - 15 years ago? These days were long gone.

I realized about halfway through that the stories weren't going to start making sense but I was curious about how it was going to end so I kept watching. I think the rating is too high so I'm leaving this review.

The way it was filmed gave me hope that the stories were going to be good since they put a lot of effort into how it was shot. However there were so many dream sequence fake outs and despite being rated mature it doesn't even show the gore. Just lots of blood, jump cuts, loud noises then it cuts away. A lot of stories are left somewhat inconclusive. I did like majority of the acting performances. The last story was by far the most predictable until the end of it.

I'm sorry but I cannot agree with many of the reviews written here about the anthology. The stories are unvarying in structure and development, only in theme, and after a while this becomes predictable and tiring. For example, every segment has a dream-within-a-dream-that-may-not-be-a-dream sequence just to introduce ambiguity to story. So when something terrifying happens in the story, don't get too excited because the entire event may not have happened at all, but is just the wild imagination of a character. The third story, moreover, about two sisters vying for the hand of a wealthy who unknown to them is a cannibal, does not make much sense and the viewer is expected to just make a lot of assumptions to fill in the gaps. And in the last story, it is obvious that the ambulance is going deliberately slowly so that the zombies can catch up to it and wreak horror on its occupants because no way can a zombie run faster than an ambulance if the ambulance was traveling at vehicle's speed. All this reflects lazy storytelling with attention given only to what would scare/disgust the audience, not entertain the audience with a good narrative corresponding with horror. Good films, whatever the genre, should tell an effective story, without which the film is just relying on its affect. A roller-coaster ride would be more thrilling and worth it for that purpose.

This Korean anthology begins with a teenager held captive by some nut who demands that the girl tell him horror stories so that he can fall asleep. The first one is about two children home alone in an apartment who are terrorized by an intruder. Another has a young woman receiving plastic surgery to look like an actress. She is jealous of her sister who is about to get married to a rich doctor. As with the first story, it goes nowhere. Another has a serial killer on a plane who takes hostages, including two stewardesses. The final segment is yet another zombie story. As with the first three segments, nothing new here. Overall. Horror Stories is a waste of time.

That pretty much sums it up. Its just ok. The set up is fun, if not a bit silly. Where it is let down is by the overall quality of the stories themselves that don't quite maintain there in story logic. The first Dont Answer the Door, starts off well and sets a great atmosphere however goes off the rails as it goes along and ends almost as if the girl reciting it had forgot how it started. The next is Endless Flight, it runs along fine but features a ghost/hallucination element that goes no where and might as well have not been included. The third is the very solid Secret Recipe, with my only gripe being overuse of some of this was a dream cliche. The finale segment Ambulance on the Death Zone simply doesn't fit the overall set up of this anthology, it is more of a scifi/horror story that one wouldn't expect her to recite as a set of scary stories. The ending of the wrap up is predictable but suitably unsettling.