Alpointeu

On 07 January 2007, the South Korean base in Nah-Trang, Vietnam, receives a radio transmission from a missing platoon presumed dead. The high-command assigns the veteran and decorated Lieutenant Choi Tae-in (Woo-seong Kam) to lead a squad with eight other soldiers and rescue the missing soldiers from the R-Point. When they arrive in the location, they have a shooting and defeat a Vietnamese woman with a machine gun in a trench. Later, they find a tombstone telling that one hundred years ago, Chinese killed Vietnamese, dropped them in a lake and built a temple over the place, being a sacred location to the Vietnamese. While chasing the missing soldiers, weird things happen with the rescue team.

"R-Point" is an original, scary and ambiguous journey to hell of the innermost fear of a group of soldiers. This horror movie explores the supernatural, but its ambiguity allows the logical interpretation that nothing happened but the madness process of a group of stressed soldiers, alone in a creepy and sacred location, affected by the dark atmosphere of the spot and killing each other. An Asian horror movie is my favorite genre due to this type of intelligent screenplay that leaves the interpretation open to the viewers. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Fantasmas da Guerra" ("Ghosts of War")

A very unique point-of-view of Vietnam war from the Korean coalition soldiers, with a side of supernatural also. If you like movies such as, "Session 9", "Deathwatch", and "Below" you will like this one, although you will have to read subtitle.

The plot of this movie is very similar to the movie like "Deathwatch".

It is about a group of Korean soldiers sent on a mission to an island with some very bad juju going on. They are there to search for another group of Korean soldiers who have gone missing earlier. Between the Viet Cons, the ghosts, and the phantom American and Korean soldiers, They must keep their sanity if the soldiers want to return alive.

This movie is beautifully shot on location in Vietnam and Cambodia and also includes a building that will reminds you of the hospital in "Session 9". The ensemble cast is very good for their roles. But I do have problem with the filmmaker portrayal of the soldiers during Vietnam war. I truly think a military adviser during the making of this film will make the soldiers more like soldiers and less like boy scouts out on a field trip.

War films are usually ten a penny, with similar plots or ideas, but R-Point bucks the trend. The film centres round a mission by a Korean unit during the Vietnam who find themselves haunted by forces they don't know, and progressively end up going mad and self-destructing.

The film blends together what the many things that have been great about Korean cinema. Sharp intelligent written story, beautiful settings and perfect acting are the crux of the movie. The setting could hardly have been any better done, whilst the tone of the movie is well paced to avoid this following into the same trap that many a horror film follow. An original film in many ways, but really it is taking various genres and blending them in them together finely.

I don't want to say too much else I will give too much away, but this is a film to watch, and is the best horror movie I have seen for a while. Shows again why Korean cinema is the best anywhere in the world at the moment. Top notch!

1972, what happened there?

'R-Point' - refers to a once strategically important region in an island 150 km south of HO Chi Minh city. French soldiers were fascinated by the beauty of the island, upon which a leisure facility and a military hospital were built. But the area has a secret past, a haunting curse untold for 30 years.

1st Vietnamese War -1949- 12 French soldiers who were in battle with communist guerrillas went mysteriously missing. A total of 650 people have been reported missing there without any explanation.

2nd Vietnamese War -1972- 9 Korean soldiers went missing in the area. There are accounts of unexplainable radio transmissions sent by the group for 6 months requesting to be rescued.

Are these freak occurrences real or not? The fact is that a gravestone which says 'No return' still stands, marking the entrance of the area. In addition, to this day, there are reported sightings by local people of the girl who was slaughtered mercilessly a long time ago.

The premise of this film is based on a story that has been passed on by oral tradition. Both French and Korean soldiers have gone missing in the area known as R-Point. In 1972, when American forces were being withdrawn from Vietnam, Korean troops eager to go home, dreaming of returning to their family and friends baring American made gifts and earned money from their service, were unexpectedly sent to R-Point on a mission which would prove fatal. Although their desire to return home was everything to them, once they entered the haunted jungles of R-Point, all hopes of coming back alive were lost. It was the living dead in the jungle that would not let them go. To this day, the cursed spirits of dead Korean soldiers roam R-Point, continuing to search for a way out.

Low on gore, few special effects and not a single large breasted girl running through a forest. Like many of the best horrors the fear in R-Point comes from what you don't see.

It's a simple premise for a film: a ghostly horror set in the dying days of the Vietnam War. It twists and pant-filling turns are so effective you think surely Hollywood couldn't resist remaking it with a giant budget. And of course they couldn't. Zhang Yimou the director of Hero is already in the process of making an English language version.

A Korean platoon are dispatched to a remote island to investigate the disappearance of nine soldiers, who despite being presumed dead have begun radioing back blood curdling messages to HQ. As usual with these type of things it's not long before a spooky girl with long dark hair turns up on the scene.

Think Blair Witch put in a blender with The Ring and Full Metal Jacket.