Jang-san-beom

Caught this on TV just past midnight, and was watching with dim lighting, which definitely set the ambience. There are some horror movie clichés and definitely plot holes, but overall it's a pretty decent and entertaining film, just don't go in expecting award winning, complex writing & characters. I found the acting, atmosphere and cinematography to be quite decent. There are intense and scary moments, and the make-up is pretty good, especially on the Tiger, who's popping out from every single angle. The girl is also pretty freaky when you think about it. As others have noted, her innocence is what makes it her scary. I recommend it if you have some spare time and like Asian horror movies.

I have a soft spot for Asian horror films. While the movie does move at a slow pace, it does continually build suspense. Sure, there are some clichés in the movie, but a positive benefit is that the movie is without jump scares. Some viewers might find the ending to be "infuriating" as it defers from a traditional feel good ending, but let's be honest here. Most horror movies involve regular people dealing with grief or trauma while simultaneously battling supernatural entities. The movie is ultimately about a woman dealing with grief and trying to keep her family together. The main characters household is charitable to a deadly fault. Ultimately, the woman's grief defies all rational logic as she is continuously warned about the impending perils she's facing. The concept of a mimic, an entity that mirrors the voice of a loved one, may not be the most innovative monster. However, the movie portrays the creature in an interesting way. If you're a fan of Asian movies that deal with human trauma and the supernatural, this may be a good watch for you. One word of caution, this is a horror movie and horror protagonist always make dumb mistakes. The cinematography was great, the acting was believable, but there were no memorable scores or music to really drive it home. Ultimately, I think it's worth a watch if you don't mind a slow build up.

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.

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

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.