Bangbeob: Jaechaui

The plot is cliché (early on when big pharmaceutical company is involved, you can guess where the story is going), the characters are stereotype (early on when key figures appear the first time, you are aware of who's the good, who's the bad and who's the ugly), the techniques are common and mediocre ("better than Hollywood"? Did those commentators watch action flicks more than 2 decades ago e.g. CON AIR (1997), RONIN (1998), THE MOMMY (1999)?) Even the title gives a false impression that a new Pirates of the Caribbean have came to the silver screen.

Nevertheless, THE CURSED: DEAD MAN'S PREY (2021) is a wonderful time killer. Subject matter Western audience loves, black magic not difficult to understand, eerie but not too scary, high body count but not too gory. This movie entertains, and is quite successful at that.

I could not really get to the end of this movie. Unfortunately, though premise is high concept and clever, the pacing threw me off. The first act has a lot of fast-paced exposition, later I found out that this movie is like a sequel to a TV series in South Korea called The Cursed, one show that has mixed reviews - but don't all media have? - so I figure the exposition is to level set a lot of the preconditions for the story.

The visuals feel like a Dorama crossing with an anime, too surreal rather than horror driven, which was what I expected. The undead feel like super mutants rather than zombies, and the idea that they commit murder and every one just finds it weird rather than insane is too unimmersive.

Hollywood is pumping out woke show after show and movies too for that matter, and a lot of people don't like the end product. I am here to tell you that Korean TV is excellent! This show gets a little weird on the whole shaman ritual thing, but beyond that it makes for compelling, entertaining television! Watch this show! 7/10.

What a concept. Awesome cinematography. Unique plot.

In South Korea, when a man is murdered in his apartment with blisters, the coroner concludes that the killer died three months ago. The investigative journalist Im Jin Hee (Uhm Ji-won), who has just released a book and created an independent news channel named Urban Detective, is interviewed by the host of a show when a stranger calls and schedules an interview with her, saying that he is responsible for the recent mysterious death. Her husband, Detective Jeong Seong Jun (Jung Moon-sung), gathers several police officers to protect Im Jin Hee from the stranger. He discloses that Director Kim Min Seop (Jung Jae-sung), President Lee Sang In (Kwon Hae-hyo) and his brother, the CEO Byun Mi-Yeong, (Oh Yoon-ah) of a big pharmaceutical company, will die unless they ask for forgiveness of his victims. When he is confronted by the police, he mysteriously dies, and he is another reanimated corpse. Jeong Seong Jun provides protection to the executives while Im Jin Hee and her team investigate the killers. Soon she concludes that the ambitious Byun Mi-Young (Oh Yoon-Ah), who is the daughter of Byun Mi-Yeong, conducted medical experiments with one hundred homeless people that died, and now a witch doctor is using the zombies to revenge them. She needs to find him to save her husband that was contaminated in a zombie attack.

"Bangbeob: Jaechaui", a.k.a "The Cursed" (2021), is an original South Korean zombie movie by Kim Yong-wan. The complex and sometimes confused screenplay blends several genres, such as crime, action and horror, with a good storyline. The greatest difficulty for us, Westerns, is to learn the name of the characters and depend on the translation sometimes not accurate. The scenes during and after the credits are messy and hard to understand. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Maldição: Despertar dos Mortos" ("The Curse: The Awake of the Dead")