LOST IN TRANSLATION - SAY THAT AGAIN?





The Guard Post (GP506) (2008) South Korea

This is one of the better movies that I didn't understand much of at all. Let me clarify that. This movie had a lot of the makings of a good movie - interesting storyline, tense drama, virus outbreak type of horror with a zombie here and there, the gore was pretty good, and there's a good mystery of what was happening and why. The problem was that the version I saw was, of course, dubbed into English - and a MAJOR problem was that this Netflix offering was missing half of the dialogue. 

That means the first half of the sentences were shown and - you had to guess the rest. Unless you know some Korean, this was impossible and very, very frustrating. Others who saw it said the dubbing was oversimplified - I just wish it was present. So if I rely on the wiki description of the movie a bit please don't think I'm getting lazy - I just didn't get some of what was happening. And that gets bloody irritating after 111 minutes.

The movie starts by telling us a little about the outpost on the South/North Korean border. It is inside the DMZ, you stay for three months without being allowed leave, you are always fully armed and that these posts are a remnant from the Cold War. Simple enough. Now:

A group of MPs break into one of the guard posts and find a bloodbath and a bunch of dismembered corpses of soldiers. They then find a guy in his skivvies holding an ax, laughing like a madman. They put him under arrest and then try to solve what the hell happened at GP506. Sergeant Major Noh is assigned to find out, and make it quiet 'cause they don't want spread that a member of their military was a psycho. The guy with the ax is now in a coma and the only survivor, and Noh has until the morning to find out what happened before they come in and 'clean' everything to cover it up. Figures.

A message in blood on one wall reads 'Kill all of them'. He tells the crew he's been given to find the answer to the puzzle and hurry it up - and he will be in command from there. They find a birthday cake with a soldier's dog tags inside among the bodies. So he believes the man in a coma must be Corporal Kang. The group then has the task of searching the whole bunker for clues. 

They have to because there are 21 men stationed at the bunker, but all of the bodies (and extra parts) only add up to 19. Even with a recount (that must have been a lot of fun) they still count 19. Two of them try to quiet the bunker's guard dogs and it bites him. At this point I think okay, we've either got a zombie virus or one of those super-rabies things like in the movie Quarantine.

This is where I started to get confused (easy for me to do in the best of circumstances) because the story switches between the stories of the previous soldiers and the soldiers currently there. It's not 'cause I'm prejudiced or anything - it's just that they're all in uniform, all sport the same haircuts and black hair, and like I mentioned, half the dialogue is missing. Oh and I'm an idiot too, so that doesn't help. So I'll identify it as Troop 1 and Troop 2, 'kay?

Troop 1: Private Cho is looking for a guard dog that won't shut up. That's their job, isn't it? He doesn't heed the smart animal's warning though and it gets away from him. The barking becomes a yelp, then silence. He finds fellow soldier Ma busily chewing his way through the dog.

Troop 2: Noh finds that all weapons are in the armory, a no-no as the above 'rules' stated. And they find another soldier, alive and waving a knife, scared to death. After feeding him he says he's 1st Lt. Yoo, son of the army chief and demanding to be sent back to base (pulling rank because you're privileged seems to be universal. After contacting his superior Noh finds they want him to bring the Lt. back despite the investigation not being complete. He decides to ignore that (so much for his career) and hangs up. He then finds Yoo, who was supposed to be under guard, ripping pages out of his journal (so much for the MP's career too). But (to get the movie going along I guess) he decides to let Yoo and another soldier leave by jeep. DUH.

Noh watches footage from a camcorder found on site. It shows the soldiers of 506 celebrating someone’s birthday, and suddenly the recording is written over, to show Cpl. Kang. He's gonna kill everyone and then himself. Meanwhile the doc is bagging and tagging bodies to transport them - but due to heavy rain, there's a landslide and he has to go back.

Troop 1: We find the troops doing what bored soldiers do - stupid stuff. Kang is showing off a large machine gun and it goes off - causing the North Korean soldier in their own bunker to fire back. Peace is restored but the soldiers are all punished. In the journal it's noted that while Kang is a prankster, he's not evil. So Noh (Troop 2) has no idea why he'd go on a rampage. 

We then see several of Troop 1 who traveled out into the woods (they don't say why) and come back sick - without one of their number. They don't remember what happened - and that's when we see that some strange rash is developing on them - one even starts to drool something yellow (and disgusting) and his body creaks like it's made of wood. Ma decides to put them in the brig but before he can, the troops say they found the missing soldier - cut to pieces. While the men lock up their buddies, one overhears Yoo telling headquarters nothing's wrong - massive duh.

Troop 2: (Are you getting dizzy or is it just me?) Doc returns with the bodies and Kang goes into a coma and dies. The jeep with Yoo in it also returns but he refuses to get out of it. After dragging him out and questioning him it is found that the men started to go, well, nutzoid. One was asked to fix the pipes in the showers and was found determinedly turning his hand into paste with a wrench. And the scars developed in to a... bubbling thing that spread out over their whole bodies. 

One dead 'bubbly' guy walked around but when he didn't attack a soldier he came face to face with, they determine they must all be infected. Another bubbly dead dude is run over (repeatedly) by an ambulance (I don't know if that was Troop 1 or 2, sorry) until he's in two pieces - but the top piece still attacks another soldier until his head is blown off (apparently that's the only way these things 'die', like zombies). And they also discover that the, whatever it is, goes dormant, leaving the person to look normal for a time so - who's friend and who's foe?

This goes on for quite a while between the two troop stories and I'm getting lost again. The bottom line, I think, is that the privileged soldier is the one who caused the mess by hallucinating while ill and murdering someone - for which he was NOT going to let anyone take him down for so he arranges for the murder of all his comrades. Nice. But is the virus real? Apparently, and so is the increasing madness of both Troops. It begins to sound like a real nasty soap opera and if you don't follow carefully, you'll lose the storyline real easily. Which I did several times.

What it comes down to, finally, is that Troop 1 are all dead. Troop 2 are infected and starting to turn on each other. When Noh figures it all out he sets the guard post to explode and burn, killing whatever virus this is (which they never do give a source of or explain it). The troops cut him down, one survives but when he starts to open the door... Noh had booby trapped it and the whole thing explodes just as Troop 3 arrives to find out what the hell's been happening.

The final scene shows Kang's message on the camcorder. He explains there's a mysterious disease that causes rashes. 'It makes you violent and attack people, then becomes dormant. We should all be dead. If you find any survivors, kill them'. The tape then shows him with the birthday cake and a bag of weapons and we hear gunfire and screaming. And trust me, this is only a small part of what happens in this film. It. Was. Exhausting.

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CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN BEFORE ATTEMPTING KUNDALINI




Yoga: The Movie aka Yoga Hakwon aka Yoga Institute  (2009) South Korea

I didn't try for any specific Country this time - I just went down the 'foreign horror' list and grabbed the first one I hadn't seen - and I got this. Other reviewers called it 'original but hard to understand'. Umm, if you didn't understand it, how do you know it was original? Sorry to tell you but this story was anything BUT original. Stories about women willing to do anything for youth and beauty is as old as... well as old as the women looking for youth and beauty.

I had youth for a short period of time. Beauty? Nah, never got to try that. Would I go to great lengths to get it so everybody will stare at me for a couple of years until both attributes go away once again? Umm... well, are there any side effects? After all, I've had more than my fair share of ailments.

This is about a very strict Yoga studio that promises to restore those two attributes to those willing to make the sacrifice needed. Only one of the students will receive what is called 'kundalini'. What the hell is this, a game show? Kundalini is a part of Hindu philosophy - not a prize. But it doesn't come without problems. The Hindus believe in body points called 'chakras' and if they are all open and aligned, you just may achieve kundalini. It is supposed to be a state of bliss - some might call it Nirvana (I love that band!) but that's a Buddhist term so maybe not. Side effects may include (and I am NOT kidding):

• Involuntary jerks, tremors, shaking, itching, tingling, and crawling sensations, especially in the arms and legs
• Energy rushes or feelings of electricity circulating the body
• Intense heat (sweating) or cold, especially as energy is experienced passing through the chakras
• Spontaneous pranayama, asanas, mudras and bandhas (these are all some kind of involuntary body movement)
• Visions or sounds at times associated with a particular chakra
• Diminished or conversely extreme sexual desire sometimes leading to a state of constant or whole-body orgasm
• Emotional upheavals or surfacing of unwanted and repressed feelings or thoughts with certain repressed emotions becoming dominant in the conscious mind for short or long periods of time.
• Headache, migraine, or pressure inside the skull
• Increased blood pressure and irregular heartbeat
• Emotional numbness
• Antisocial tendencies
• Mood swings with periods of depression or mania
• Pains in different areas of the body, especially back and neck
• Sensitivity to light, sound, and touch
• Trance-like and altered states of consciousness
• Disrupted sleep pattern (periods of insomnia or oversleeping)
• Loss of appetite or overeating
• Bliss, feelings of infinite love and universal connectivity, transcendent awareness

In other words, except for the last one, kundalini is FREAKING FIBROMYALGIA! I KNEW IT! I'm not sick, I'M ENLIGHTENED! Okay, no hate mail please, I'm just kidding and geez, would you take a medication that gave you even HALF of these side effects? I mean I do but I have to.

Oh, the movie? Umm let's see. A woman who loses her job as a host of a shopping channel to a younger, prettier girl gets desperate and hears of an extreme yoga program guaranteed to bring back her youth and beauty. Yoga? Is that a code word for plastic surgery? So off she goes, along with several other women all desperate to be 21 again. So far we've got hints of the movies Suspiria and All About Eve. The rest is every movie about beauty envy there is.

The women arrive and find there are very strict rules for them to follow during their 7 day course:

1. No contact with the outside world.
2. No unauthorized consumption of food.
3. No showers or baths within one hour after training sessions.
4. No mirrors.
5. No disclosure of the events within this academy to the outside world.

Consequences for breaking the rules are dire, but they're not told what they are. And so begins seven days of torture. I mean I hurt just watching these women bend and twist trying to, I dunno, contort their way back in time? I know genuine yoga is supposed to be very good for the body, combines meditation with exercise but what they perform is a real horrorshow.

And of course, even though it's only for seven days, the women break the rules and one by one they disappear. Finally, one is left and she thinks groovy, kundalini is mine - well, sort of. See, she WILL be pretty and young, but she has to give up her soul. There's always a catch, isn't there? So we get a somewhat confusing ending (probably part of that is due to the dubbing, part to the fact that my mind is like a steel trap - that's rusted shut) as she finds out what happened to the other girls (something about an ageless being sucking up the lives of everyone who comes there - saw lots of bodies of girls sort of still alive plus someone really... snake looking (part of kundalini's definition has to do with a serpentine quality) and our one girl left escaping but not without getting her arm scarred up.

The ending is even more confusing - she's going somewhere but sees her fallen comrades everywhere and then the lights go out - when they come on she sees posters of the one she escaped everywhere and she starts to scream... um, I think. You might have to watch yourself and get a better interpretation than that. Sheesh.

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OP OP OP OP OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE

White: The Melody Of The Curse aka Hwaiteu: Jeojooui Mellodi (2011) 
South Korea

You would think that a movie like this would have too many strikes against it to be worth a look - I did. Fortunately I was wrong about this one. Yes, it's Korean and some things are hard to understand even with the captioning, it's Eastern horror which means curses and vengeful ghosts, it's about a girl K-Pop band, and it comes in at 106 minutes.

But this movie was well made, it had some good special effects and some that were just okay, the story was pretty clear and the ending was not something I could write halfway into the movie although it seemed it would be. Apparently in South Korea, to be a 'K-Pop' debut star is like passing tryouts for a dozen American Idol contests. Not to get to the finals, I mean win the actual contest a dozen times. 

There are thousands of young, beautiful girls who've trained hard to get into the 'biz. The girl group 'Pink Dolls' are no exception. Trained in dance and singing, it's all for naught when they lose a televised competition to another group that looked just like them (no I'm not being racist, just saying they're all about 16 and gorgeous and interchangeable) and so are ready to quit. 

They then get a new studio where their manager will grill them to work even harder to try to record a hit (unless they're willing to wear a yellow suit and dance like they're riding a horse). But even within the group, there is competition to be the 'lead' girl, the others considered merely glorified backup dancers. Hmm, I wonder if *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys or New Kids On The Block ever had that problem. I'm looking at you Joey Fatone.

The studio has been mostly rebuilt after a fire wrecked it 15 years ago. This was the point where I thought I could safely map out the rest of the movie, conclusion and all. I had some points but I was wrong about a lot of others. While checking out the wall of mirrors one day a girl finds a cache of VHS tapes, with one marked 'WHITE'. When they try to look at the tape the picture is crap but the music comes through. 

Since as I said there are thousands of young hopefuls with thousands of potential hit songs that never get heard, these girls decide to steal this song and make it their big hit. They even attempt to copy the choreographed moves. I guess for the purpose of 'what happens next' I should tell you who's in the group: Je-ni, a singer insecure with hitting high notes, Ah-Rang, a singer addicted to cosmetics, Shin-Ji who can't sing, but is an excellent dancer and Eun-Ju, the eldest and former backup dancer who is constantly bullied by the younger three.

When at the next contest they perform White they are an instant success. Now to promote the snot out of this song (in Gangnam Syle) the manager decides that the 'lead' girl should wear a white wig to stand out from the rest of the girls. This causes a lot of inside tension since the girls are already at each others throats to be the standout girl - and now the bad stuff starts. And despite the captioning I'm getting lost so I had to borrow names and some things from wiki - sorry about that.

Je-ni who, after recording for the lead but still failing to hit the high notes and has to use a process they called 'doubling' (having another singer cover those notes over her voice), is found hanging from a cord inside the studio. Next Ah-Rang becomes the lead but starts reacting to her makeup which causes her eyes to swell and turn red. Since she can't see, while recording on stage she sees... something bad and falls off the stage. The doctors say it is simply a bad reaction to cosmetic surgery. At her age? Sheesh. Eun-Ju suspects a connection to the leads' bad luck so now we get our Scooby hats on and try to figure out if it has something to do with the original girls who performed the song they stole.

Well duh, of course it does - this part I easily mapped out. They stole a song from girls that had something bad happen to at least one of them and so each girl, as she is named the 'main' girl is gonna get it. It's horror movie 101 stuff - you just get to figure out the how. One pretty cool effect that got ruined by the setup was before Ah-Rang went on stage she was practicing in front of the wall of mirrors. Now I had to look at that sequence a few times because her movements and the mirrors didn't quite sync up. There was a reason for that. 

What they did (which would have been more clever if they'd done this more carefully) is the subtle effect of while she's dancing there's probably a dozen mirrors all dancing back at her - until one starts to make moves of its own. That was pretty damn cool and if they'd just done a plain sequence with her dancing then substituted that particular mirror in editing it would have been terrific 'cause even flawed it was pretty creepy. She checks out her reflection and we all know that's a bad thing to do, isn't it Scooby fans? Of course the image turns into a ghostly ghastly image and scares the hell out of her.

And so after some sleuthing it's discovered that the singer from the video, Jang Ye-Bin, died in the fire in the studio because she was blamed for the suicide of a backup dancer. That backup had wanted to be the 'main' so Jang and the others forced her to drink bleach and also splashed it on her face, ruining it. Ouch. But then they figure Jang started the fire because HER face was scarred - uh wait. Now I'm confused even with the wiki and my notes. The point is that SOMEBODY got their face messed up and they are PISSED. So whenever that song is played, watch out. Shin-Ji is next and sure enough, while participating in some psychedelic reality show (Eastern TV can be just as weird) her hair is caught by a high rise camera and eventually she's crushed under it - but lives. All three girls are now in the same ward. How convenient.

Eun-Ju is the only girl left and does NOT want to go on being the 'main' (actually she's solo now but...) so she has a ritual to put Jang to rest (this kind of stuff is BIG with Eastern culture) and after that is done, well all is good as gold now and Eun-Ju can become a superstar (hey, there's a ton of one-hit wonders after all). To make herself stand out (uh oh) she bleaches her hair white and wears a ton of makeup (in other words, she looks like a teenager) and her cycle of fame begins. Meanwhile the friend who'd helped her (the same girl who performed the 'doubling' on the soundtrack) is kind of left by the roadside, bye bye girlfriend. 

We are also now getting a better look at the girl from the Ring - uh no, wait sorry. It's just that all these goopy looking Eastern ghosts are starting to look alike - nasty gaping faces, lank black hair hanging over their face (until of course they want to scare the crap out of someone) and crawling along like a creaky spider.

Now this movie should be over, but no, we've got 106 minutes to fill and we're not done yet. Eun is going to compete on television to see if her song will get the #1 spot (boy am I glad we've got the Billboard charts, we don't have to go through this stuff). Her three former 'Pink Dolls', when they see she is going ahead without them and taking all the glory somehow convince the sponsor to let them announce the contest - and all three commit suicide on television (now THAT would be something).

Now Thelma - err I mean her friend Soon-Ye was already upset about basically being dissed by her former friend and she burns all of everything reminding her of Eun - now officially going by the name 'White'. But her suspicions still get the better of her (especially after seeing the girls kill themselves) and she goes back to the recording studio. She finds that the supposed singer/ghost did NOT sing the song White - it was dubbed, or as they called it, doubled. She tries to warn Eun but she's too important now - and due to the appearance of the REAL singer ghost (don't ask, I'm lost even with the wiki) there's a panic in the studio, the lights go out, and Eun is killed when she is trampled to death by her adoring but get-out-of-my-way-or-I'll-kill-your-ass fans.

 Our last view is Thel- umm I mean Soon-Ye at a karaoke bar which the East have more of than we have Starbucks and she's getting rid of anything and everything White. Not soon enough - she hears someone select that song on the machine which would be no big deal - except that she herself is the one who 'doubles' on the soundtrack and she's next on our strange white-haired ghost's hit list...



                              

EASTERN HORROR IS CONFUSING

Epitaph (Gidam) (2007) South Korea

I've always said that Eastern cultures are afraid of different things than Western cultures. Rarely in the East will you find movies on serial killers or slashers or monsters like Freddy Kruger. In the East, they are afraid of angering their ancestors or vengeful ghosts or spirits becoming attached to them like an extra shadow or something. I don't pretend to understand it, but I try to watch a few here and there. With uneven English subtitles and rituals and customs that are unfamiliar, I can only watch when I've got half a brain to concentrate with, because unlike a lot of stupid horror movies you can't just watch with one eye and do something else - it takes full concentration.

This is sort of an anthology in that there are several stories within the main story, but since they are sort of intertwined with characters appearing in more than one story it was really hard to keep it all straight. I don't promise that I really got the complete gist of this, but it was interesting all the same. The photography was gorgeous, the soundtrack was very pleasant and the scenes were set up very well. Now if I spoke Korean I would really have enjoyed the subtleties of this film.

We start with an older doctor named Jung Nam who's given a photo album from a hospital that's about to be torn down. He realizes it's the album he put together when he was a young doctor at the hospital in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor. I wondered why there were a lot of Japanese in the movie so I had to look it up. During WWII Japan led Korea by colonial rule - exploitation of a weaker country by a stronger country. And here is basically the stories they put together: 

Jung Nam, a student,  becomes obsessed with the corpse of a young woman who was found drowned in the icy river. Then they start the second tale: A young girl called Asako is brought into the hospital after a car crash which claimed the life of her mother. The mother haunts her and scares her to death. See, that's what I don't understand about the Eastern thing. Why would you have to be afraid of your mother? The final tale is the case of a murdered Japanese soldier which is being investigated by doctors In Young and her husband Dong Won. The husband is beginning to suspect his wife of the crime because he notices she has no shadow. Again, didn't understand the significance of that, but did appreciate how they did the special effects, low key but very effective. And this is also why even though I paid strict attention to this movie, I got lost a lot because these three stories kept crossing over each other, certain scenes repeated themselves without explanation and the whole thing was just... yeah.

All I could tell for sure was that in the case of the frozen girl the student is obsessed with her because he keeps having visions of her alive - even a vision of a whole life with her (a very rich and beautiful sequence actually) until he comes to and realizes he's naked with a corpse covered in snails and leaking rancid water. Ick. The punchline, so to speak, is that the mother of the dead girl 'married' her daughter's dead spirit to the live student's body to keep her soul away from the man who caused her death. That's what they said, honest.

The young girl haunted by her mother is the result of her mother marrying a man whom the young girl also fancies (she's about 10 so it's a crush) and she has determined that her new 'dad' should love her like he loves her mother. While driving they argue and in a fit she grabs the steering wheel and causes them to crash, killing all but the girl who doesn't even get a scratch. When the girl comes out of her catatonic state and tells the doctor the whole story, the haunting stops. And so does the girl's heart. Why did she die? Dunno. And the doctor that treated her gets hit by a car right afterward and sees her as he dies. Huh?

The murdered soldier that the doc figured his wife did 'cause she had no shadow? At the beginning they had shown a film of brain surgery being performed on a Japanese General Hirai by both husband and wife. After the surgery when the General woke up he wasn't quite all there and grabbed a scalpel and killed the wife. The husband had been living with her 'memory' for a year. Ah but wait, there's more. We now know why a Japanese person was targeted (revenge) but hey - it wasn't the wife who was killed but the husband. His wife has been living a year as her husband. Confused? Yeah, don't blame you.

But they really tried, and there are spooky moments galore and it was well made so if you want to try to make more sense of it than I did, give it a try - you might like it.



                              

HIGHER EDUCATION WILL KILL YOU








Ryeong (Dead Friend) 
aka The Ghost (2004) S. Korea

I thought I'd put a little foreign higher education up for a look-see to find if their students fare any better than American ones when it comes to going off to college only to get themselves killed. Being an Eastern film, I knew this wasn't going to be about machete wielding psychos or friends going on break in some remote place to get picked off one by one.

If you've ever watched Eastern movies you know that they mostly have a whole different set of fears than the Western world, mainly of angered or nasty ancestors, ghosts, ghoulies, etc. Anything that has to do with the spiritual world is the stuff of their nightmares. The American poster of this movie says it's a combination of Dark Water and The Grudge. I'd say it's more a direct ripoff of The Ring which of course rips off Ringu. In any language this film had not a single interesting thing about it. The sight of Asian girls looking wickedly through wet hair has long lost its scare potential and this movie depends on that scene a lot.

The basics 'cause a complete story is pedantic, we have two girls growing up together as friends and of course as things go one goes on to friend others while the other is left behind. The four girls use her to their advantage but don't really like her. Fast forward to high school and they are even more cruel.

Now Min Ji-Won is in college although she is an amnesiac after some accident she, of course, can't remember and no one will tell her. She feels well enough to leave college, go overseas and start over as... whoever she is now. But her amnesia is starting to fall apart - bits and pieces of her past come flooding in her dreams and in real life - and she finds that the girls she went to school with (the three she hung with) are dying, and the one they ignored has been missing for over a year.



It doesn't take a college graduate (or an expert movie reviewer either) to figure this out the first time ole' soggy bottom shows herself - obviously something happened to the unpopular one and she drowned, causing Ji-Won's amnesia. Duh. But this movie takes 95 minutes to get to the point and we get droning story with little 'eeks' here and there to keep it a supposed 'horror' movie. And finding the dead girl in the water perfectly preserved after a year under because the water 'is full of arsenic' was just a massive DUH.

 The only interesting effect was, instead of crawling out of a television, the drowned pissed off spirit crawls up from a wood floor - a mixture of wood and water that they did a pretty good job of mixing together - a little shaky, but still pretty good. 

It reminded me of My Chemical Romance's video The Ghost Of You, when they blended a veteran's hall with a battlefield - great effects all around.

But since these things never have happy endings, the amnesiac finds out she's really a stone cold bitch, we get a 'who's got the spirit' sequence that really is not explained AT ALL, Ji-Won slashes her wrist to keep the spirit away but the spirit's not going to give up and is still (unknown to Ji-Won) possessing the dead girl's mother. Possibly hoping for a sequel I suppose.