Amjeon

Probably one of the most irritating films I've seen in a very long time. Generally South Korean film is excellent but this one is, in my view, a real stinker.

"Warning: Do Not Play" starts of well enough and looks promising but then, for totally unfathomable reasons, heads off on an addled monsterous mystery tour. It took all my will power to see this thing through to its weak tea conclusion.

Its a shame too as the core premise is worthwhile, acting solid and cinamatics polished.

2/10.

Back in 2007, first time director Kim Jin-Won created an one of the most brutal films ever made. The Butcher was a snuff film entirely in first person. The two characters are strapped to chairs, giving helmets with cameras on them and brutally tortured in first person. The three men doing the torturing were filming their every move using handheld cameras.

This film was incredibly brutal and very real feeling. The director has not made another film since that. I was incredibly pumped to see that this director has made this new film for Shudder.

Unfortunately his new film isn't really great. They have some decent jump scares, great environments and the effects looked pretty good, however it has a lot of horror cliche's and the ending doesn't really do the film too much justice.

I think the film is worth a watch at least. I enjoyed it for what it was, I just wish it was better.

The Butcher was a better film. It was clever and unique for its time. Whilst it doesn't hold up too generously now a days, it still a cult classic.

I love horror and look for it in many places and through that journey, I've come across a range of films that fall between being a decent watch and total garbage. This falls somewhere between somewhat passable and garbage. The story itself has potential but the execution, annoying characters and lack of visibility absolutely ruin it.

The story is about a woman who's trying to come up with a good horror script and hears about a blacklisted graduate film rumored to be both terrifying and made by a ghost. She becomes annoyingly obsessed with finding the film, watching it and using it to come up with something of her own.

The main character's annoying. She's moody, self-involved and even more fueled with curiosity when warned to stay away from the film. She just wasn't fun to watch.

The sets were grungy and not unexpected for a horror film but they lacked inspiration and there were so many scenes that were just total darkness. Seriously, you couldn't see anything that was happening. This style of filming can be used in ways that are advantageous for horror but it can also ruin a horror movie if the viewer has no clue what they are supposed to be afraid of.

I dunno. I was just disappointed. I was expecting more than I got and even found myself losing interest from time to time. I'm sure that some folks might enjoy it but it just didn't work for me.

Eager to continue her studies, a rookie film director becomes intrigued by reports of a cursed film rumored to be directed by a ghost and sets out to learn more about it, but the closer to the truth she gets the more she uncovers a dangerous entity coming for her and must try to solve the mystery safely.

Overall, this was a pretty solid effort. One of the strongest elements here is the folklore and backstory given to the particular film as there's a lot of detail here to make it fun. Though the concept of the cursed film driving people insane when they watch it is nothing new, the setup featured here of the individual tormented to live out the rest of his life as a paranoid, deranged lunatic for filming and releasing what he did which starts the spread of the rumors involving the film and its legacy afterward. That ties nicely into the other solid positive with the film's supernatural elements. The opening sequence of the figure stalking a character through a darkened car-park using a cellphone camera for light is a chilling and pretty creepy opening, while the encounter with the frantic former director in his house is a nice segment. The changing lights, crazed behavior and frantic attacks to get at her all set the stage for the final half where the return to the abandoned, fire-ravaged theater which features plenty of tactics from recreations of the original incidents to her encounters with the ghost that has some solid action, giving this one a lot to like. There are some issues to be had with this one. The biggest letdown is the series of investigations that are taking place in the first half where the pace is so dragged out and slow to get going that there are several start-and-stop plot-points added to this one. The meetup with the various film-students who spill the urban legend about the movie to her, the different instructors at the film-centers she talks with to learn the truth about the movie or the searches around the university grounds trying to find it which are all necessary to understand what's going on yet just don't have the urgency needed to help this one out. The other problem here is with the seemingly cursed movie that's supposed to drive her insane yet that barely materializes. Very rarely does anything in here make sense, from how the psychological strain of attempting to find out how anything worked on the original shoot which causes her to be tormented by the forces who worked on it to the sudden introduction of morality into the story and all the background characters from the filming being involved, this one is confusing and quite chaotic to make out what's going on. Coupled with some cheap make-up effects from time-to-time, these are where the film stumbles.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

Watch this if you want to see a fragile "protagonist" crying, flailing and waving some sort of razor around for 25+ mins.