Mooseo-woon-iyagi

This Korean anthology begins with a teenager held captive by some nut who demands that the girl tell him horror stories so that he can fall asleep. The first one is about two children home alone in an apartment who are terrorized by an intruder. Another has a young woman receiving plastic surgery to look like an actress. She is jealous of her sister who is about to get married to a rich doctor. As with the first story, it goes nowhere. Another has a serial killer on a plane who takes hostages, including two stewardesses. The final segment is yet another zombie story. As with the first three segments, nothing new here. Overall. Horror Stories is a waste of time.

"Horror Stories" – too bad about the mundane title – is an anthology from the elite horror country South Korea. Personally, I would have preferred any next new horror film from South Korea to revolve on a serial killer fed up with the annoying trend of Gangnam Style and going out on a sadist rampage to butcher everyone who performs the stupid little dance moves... including, of course, the massacre of the original performer during the grand finale! But alas, no Gangnam slashing just yet... "Horror Stories" is a collective of four relatively young and still debuting writers/directors with each one or two films on their resumes. I sincerely doubt that this largely prototypic and unmemorable omnibus will become their jumping board towards international success, but it's nevertheless a worthwhile viewing experience in case you're a fan of Asian horror and/or horror anthologies in general.

Like with its title, "Horror Stories" also suffers from an extremely mundane wraparound story. A young high school girl is held captive by a dull serial killer and, in order to gain herself some valuable time, she narrates folklore horror tales. That's pretty much the same premise as the early 90's flick "Tales from the Dark Side", but even that one had an inventive twist. "Horror Stories" exists of four segments, two of which are very enjoyable and suspenseful and the other two rather derivative and tedious. The opening segment centers on the two children of a strict businesswoman who are home alone late at night with a suspicious delivery guy outside their door. This short story is reasonably atmospheric and the children give above average performances, but it's extremely banal and predictable. The fourth and final tale is yet another umpteenth variant on the exhausted theme of zombies/virus-infected people. An ambulance with the some of the last survivors desperately rushes back to the hospital. They are transporting a girl of which her mother stubbornly claims that she wasn't bitten by zombies... There's brutal violence and explicit gore in this chapter, but sadly also a total lack of originality and coherence. The best two stories are in the middle, with the second one revolving on a serial killer who frees himself during a private prison transport by plane and promptly goes after the cabin crew and stewardesses. This tale, directed by the same guy who made the crazed "To Sir with Love", benefices from the claustrophobic setting and features some deeply disturbing images. The absolute finest of the four tells the tale of a young girl who's jealous of her older stepsister because she got engaged to a handsome, sophisticated and wealthy. When regular flirting and even plastic surgery doesn't help to catch his attention, the girl – with the help of her mother - locks up the stepsister in the bedroom and takes her place at the altar. But then, naturally, the man turns out to have his share of dark secrets and peculiar routines as well. This segment is delightfully absurd and thus the only one that has that typically Asian cult/bizarre atmosphere.

I'm sorry but I cannot agree with many of the reviews written here about the anthology. The stories are unvarying in structure and development, only in theme, and after a while this becomes predictable and tiring. For example, every segment has a dream-within-a-dream-that-may-not-be-a-dream sequence just to introduce ambiguity to story. So when something terrifying happens in the story, don't get too excited because the entire event may not have happened at all, but is just the wild imagination of a character. The third story, moreover, about two sisters vying for the hand of a wealthy who unknown to them is a cannibal, does not make much sense and the viewer is expected to just make a lot of assumptions to fill in the gaps. And in the last story, it is obvious that the ambulance is going deliberately slowly so that the zombies can catch up to it and wreak horror on its occupants because no way can a zombie run faster than an ambulance if the ambulance was traveling at vehicle's speed. All this reflects lazy storytelling with attention given only to what would scare/disgust the audience, not entertain the audience with a good narrative corresponding with horror. Good films, whatever the genre, should tell an effective story, without which the film is just relying on its affect. A roller-coaster ride would be more thrilling and worth it for that purpose.

That pretty much sums it up. Its just ok. The set up is fun, if not a bit silly. Where it is let down is by the overall quality of the stories themselves that don't quite maintain there in story logic. The first Dont Answer the Door, starts off well and sets a great atmosphere however goes off the rails as it goes along and ends almost as if the girl reciting it had forgot how it started. The next is Endless Flight, it runs along fine but features a ghost/hallucination element that goes no where and might as well have not been included. The third is the very solid Secret Recipe, with my only gripe being overuse of some of this was a dream cliche. The finale segment Ambulance on the Death Zone simply doesn't fit the overall set up of this anthology, it is more of a scifi/horror story that one wouldn't expect her to recite as a set of scary stories. The ending of the wrap up is predictable but suitably unsettling.

Korean movies get worse and worse. When were the days they are actually "watchable"? At least 10 - 15 years ago? These days were long gone.