Dead Friend

I received this Corean film for free when I purchased a bunch of other titles from YesAsia.com. I didn't really want it, but every time I deleted a free title, this one would pop up. Eventually, I consented to receive this one for free.

This is a horror film, as you can tell from the title, and is not related to the U.S. film bearing the same name. The setup is this: There's an amnesiac woman who starts seeing funny things. People who she used to know start to wind up dead. Spooky goings on, I say. Spooky.

Personally, I wasn't terribly frightened during the course of the film, although the jump-scares were sometimes effective, but at other times failed to startle me. The central conceit of the film (the amnesia) is a little silly, but I suppose that's what you deal with in horror films. In this one, it allows the film to be a mystery as well, as the young woman tries to recollect the past. The end conceits are a little forced and a bit hard to buy, personally, but it does help the film to be a little bit more than a total genre knockoff.

Unfortunately, the film still ends up being less than impressive. The acting isn't terrible and the overall direction is easy to take in. It's just that the story is ho-hum. I suppose you could do a lot worse; this is mildly entertaining stuff. 6/10.

The teenager Min Ji-won (Ha-Neul Kim) is suffering from amnesia and being haunted by weird visions. When she meets her former high school friend Oh Yu-jeong (Hie-ju Jeon), she receives a picture of her high school group of friends: Kim Eun-seo (Bin), who had recently died; Shin Mi-kyeong (Yi Shin), who is in the hospital and Eun-jeong (Yun-ji Lee). Ji-won questions who took the picture, and when she visits her former friends, she recalls Han Su-in (Sang-mi Nam), a girl that was badly treated and humiliated by their group, disclosing her past and the fate of Su-in and finding a scary hidden truth.

"The Ghost" is a creepy and scary movie, but like other Asian horror movies (for example, "The Tale of the Twin Sisters" or "Rinne"), has a complex, confused and intriguing twist in the end. My first difficulty was to associate the names of the characters performed by the gorgeous actresses with their faces. I repeated the first chapters three times to make this association. When Ji-won meets her mother in the end unraveling the mystery, I repeated three or four times to clarify the twist. If I were in the movie theater, I would not have the chance of rewinding and understanding the plot. But Asian horror movie is my favorite genre and I liked this film a lot, and I startled many times, especially with the scary atmosphere and the soundtrack. This is the type of movie that deserves to be watched at least two times. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Tartan's new release of Ryeong, A.k.a. The Ghost is not one of their better releases. In fact, I found The Ghost to be one of the worst Asian ghost stories I've seen in awhile. This is not to say that Ghost is necessarily a bad film, it just doesn't offer anything new to jaded horror viewers, and seems like a hodge-podge of several prior successful Asian horror films, Chiefly, The Ring, Ju-On, Shutter, and Dark Water.

The Ghost tells the story of Ji-Won, a young student who is afflicted with amnesia. She is completely unaware of her prior life, including an incident which sets up the haunting of Ji-Won by a long-haired ghost girl. As her friends start to die off, she decides to investigate the event that led to the deaths of her friends. Peeling back the layers of her subconscious, she slowly unravels clues to her past, which inevitably lead to a giant plot-twist, which I saw coming at about 20 minutes into the film.

If it sounds like something you've seen before, that's because it is. The Ghost adds nothing new to the K-Horror genre and heavily borrows (Or steals) from past K and J-Horror successes. In fact, even some of the score was lifted from The Shutter (not to mention the plot)! The sad thing is that the film isn't all that bad. The Ghost is somewhat creepy, there are some decent scares, the pacing is good, and the story is decent. But to those of us familiar with Asia Horror, it's just more of the same. If The Ghost had been made before such films as The Ring or Dark Water, it would probably be regarded as a great entry into the K-Horror genre. Alas, it was made after, and offers nothing new, but retreads of familiar territory.

If your a fan of K-Horror and are looking for something to pass time until the next great Horror flick comes out, or if you like to collect K-Horror than check it out. If your the occasional Asian horror flick viewer, save your time. You've seen it all before.

My Rating 4.5 out of 10. The Ghost delivers nothing that I hadn't seen before. It's predictable, and forgettable.

A young female college student Ji-won who has recovered from a serious accident,which led her to have amnesia.As she attempts to put her past together and get her current life straightened out,she slowly comes to realize that those she associated with in high school are now turning up dead and all are keyed to water.As fragments of her memories and the people she knew come together,she experiences weird visions of a girl drowning and what she thinks is a ghost following her around.Could there be a connection?"Dead Friend" is obviously inspired by Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" and "Dark Water",but it certainly offers some genuine scares.The most terrifying moments in "Dead Friend" come from the appearance of a ghostly girl with drenched hair and one evil eye looking out from the mass of hair.The climax is extremely creepy and surprising,so I was pleased.The cinematography is gorgeous with a lovely green look and the sound effects are awesome.Watch "Dead Friend" alone in the dark and it will creep you out.8 out of 10.

"The Ghost" tells the story of Ji-Won, a young student suffering from amnesia. Ostracised by her former friends and haunted by strange visions, she begins to try to unravel the mystery of her past...

Despite what people may say, there's only most tenuous links to the classic "Ringu" and the not-quite-so-good "Dark Water." Look beyond the shared imagery (which is from classical Japanese/Asian mythology anyway and wasn't invented by Nakata) and judge this movie on its own merits and you'll find a very cleverly structured, disturbing and touching horror movie with a clever twist and some memorably creepy scenes.

A far superior movie to the overly praised "Dark Water" and right up there with "A Tale of Two Sisters" as Korea's premiere horror.