Dead Friend

"The Ghost" tells the story of Ji-Won, a young student suffering from amnesia. Ostracised by her former friends and haunted by strange visions, she begins to try to unravel the mystery of her past...

Despite what people may say, there's only most tenuous links to the classic "Ringu" and the not-quite-so-good "Dark Water." Look beyond the shared imagery (which is from classical Japanese/Asian mythology anyway and wasn't invented by Nakata) and judge this movie on its own merits and you'll find a very cleverly structured, disturbing and touching horror movie with a clever twist and some memorably creepy scenes.

A far superior movie to the overly praised "Dark Water" and right up there with "A Tale of Two Sisters" as Korea's premiere horror.

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

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.

Tartan's new release of Ryeong, A.k.a. The Ghost is not one of their better releases. In fact, I found The Ghost to be one of the worst Asian ghost stories I've seen in awhile. This is not to say that Ghost is necessarily a bad film, it just doesn't offer anything new to jaded horror viewers, and seems like a hodge-podge of several prior successful Asian horror films, Chiefly, The Ring, Ju-On, Shutter, and Dark Water.

The Ghost tells the story of Ji-Won, a young student who is afflicted with amnesia. She is completely unaware of her prior life, including an incident which sets up the haunting of Ji-Won by a long-haired ghost girl. As her friends start to die off, she decides to investigate the event that led to the deaths of her friends. Peeling back the layers of her subconscious, she slowly unravels clues to her past, which inevitably lead to a giant plot-twist, which I saw coming at about 20 minutes into the film.

If it sounds like something you've seen before, that's because it is. The Ghost adds nothing new to the K-Horror genre and heavily borrows (Or steals) from past K and J-Horror successes. In fact, even some of the score was lifted from The Shutter (not to mention the plot)! The sad thing is that the film isn't all that bad. The Ghost is somewhat creepy, there are some decent scares, the pacing is good, and the story is decent. But to those of us familiar with Asia Horror, it's just more of the same. If The Ghost had been made before such films as The Ring or Dark Water, it would probably be regarded as a great entry into the K-Horror genre. Alas, it was made after, and offers nothing new, but retreads of familiar territory.

If your a fan of K-Horror and are looking for something to pass time until the next great Horror flick comes out, or if you like to collect K-Horror than check it out. If your the occasional Asian horror flick viewer, save your time. You've seen it all before.

My Rating 4.5 out of 10. The Ghost delivers nothing that I hadn't seen before. It's predictable, and forgettable.

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...