The 8th Night

Went into this movie completely blind, expected it to be the typical netflix mildew but its suprisingly well known and from a unknown director cast and crew Visually its really interesting and almost has a slight anime look to it, the story its the best part with nice twists and turns along the way.

Soundtrack and score are also very nice its a great sounding movie especially in surround Some of it needed improving some rough editing but overall i really enjoyed it.

Some hammy acting aside the main monks do a great job.

If you want a korean hereditary this is your movie.

My only real slight against it is that the english dub is TERRIBLE much worse then most non english movies, watch the subtitled version in korean.

Too much time spent on chit chat n mumbo jumbo stuff which made the movie boring except for the finale which has a brutal kill by the branch.

Basically the story is very similar to Denzel Washington's The Fallen.

This movie cud have been better but alas.

I dont mind the religious mumbo jumbo stuff but at least they cud have made it spooky n atmospheric like Conjuring, Annabelle, Insidious, etc.

I really liked the origin story-very intriguing and creepy! It successfully set the tone for the entire movie. The countdown made me feel all the tension even if there were no jumpscares. Not a lot of gore, either. But there are very scary people here alright. Good twist at the end, too!

The Good: I love the incorporation of Buddhist mythology and theology in the plot; maybe it's just me, but given the overwhelming depiction of Christianity in ghost and horror movies (even in South Korea), it's refreshing. The characters are generally very fun, particularly the dynamic between young, naive monk Cheonseok and grizzled veteran Jin Woo.

Also, the visuals are trippy and grotesque enough to be compelling, even if the plot is a bit convoluted at times. I love the "eye" and how it moves and acts.

The Bad: As I said before, the plot can be a bit convoluted and complicated, for no particularly good reason. We're still learning things during the film's final act, which is a bit of a problem.

The Ugly: the music. I don't know why, but the music in this one is really cheesy and took me out of the movie multiple times. For a film that lives and dies by its atmosphere, it's a bigger issue than you'd think.

A new South Korean horror on Netflix. With prayer beads in one hand and an ax in the other, a monk hunts down a millennia-old spirit that's possessing humans and unleashing hell on Earth.

Getting straightforward to the point, the plot was incredibly convoluted. A complicated plot doesn't mean a bad thing, but in this movie it was unnecessarily confusing. Even though I was able to wrap my head around it, the twist wasn't surprising or mind-blowing, but only weird and nonsensical.

I might be able to forgive this weird plot if there were good horror, but I was disappointed. Only the design for the eyes were solid in this movie, while the other effects were not scary at all. The movie avoided almost all gore. When someone was about to be attacked, the quick edits came in and we moved on without seeing any blood. That just took away most of the potential scares. There were also twisted-neck effects, but they felt cheap and lame. Lastly, one of the girl in this movie was suppose to be creepy with her smile, but it felt more like a clown face.

With all the slow burn pacing and confusing plot, I could not care much about the characters. The two main characters had an important backstory that was pretty alright, but didn't hit me much.

Overall, a very disappointing South Korean horror. 4/10.