Witch Board: Bunshinsaba

Totally thought this would be a garbage throwaway movie, but was pleasantly surprised. If you like Ringu or Ju-on you will love this movie. The number of times that the people in the theater gasped or shrieked was surprising. The row of young people (was this in Singapore) next to me watched the whole movie through their hands or with the collars of their shirts ready to cover their eyes. Excellent. Creepy and atmospheric, with enough twists to make you follow it to the end. Heathers meets Freddy.

Top Notch.

Well is there anything we haven't seen before? The answer is simple 'NO'. As the plot suggests, the whole movie revolves in the consequences. As any other Asian movie you'll find the same girl with long hair coming over and over on the screen to frighten you with some acoustic bass and creepy sounds. Here the problem is that it repeats again and again with very low scare scale. The story is pretty simple and there's nothing much to expect. Still it manages to keep us awake with the screenplay. They should have modified the story and presented with some surprises as the basic idea of horror i.e. the woman with long hair fails here. The atmosphere which builds is definitely creepy to some extent but not up to the mark. The theme is also the old lame revenge of ghost type which makes it just an average movie who might be able to frighten amateurs.

Much like Ringu, Ju-on, Ryong, A Tale of two Sisters and about a thousand other Asian horror films, we have a female ghost with with thick-black hair pulled over her face exacting some kind of hellish retribution on hapless victims.

What keeps this from simply disappearing underneath the mounds of similar films is a greater focus on story (specifically the who and why) and a couple creative death scenes.

All around the filming is solid and most of the scare set-ups work pretty well. Some of the characters are a little over-written/acted and the film looses focus moving toward the end, as if the movie is trying to cover too much ground to fast.

A mostly enjoyable, if wholly forgettable, supernatural yarn.

6/10

Vengeful ghosts return to haunt and destroy the people that caused their death. You might recognize a little of The Ring, as the mother had special mental powers. The ghosts, of course, have that hair effect with the eyes looking ... ghastly.

A nice plot element is that the ghosts in this film really do have purpose, other than just killing and avenging. They do that beautifully, of course, but as a hobby not as a full time job :)

The problem with the film is that it is not scary. The good ideas in the script are not fully capitalized. When people from a small isolated village see their children die inexplicably one would expect great turmoil and a lot of interesting things happening. Alas it was too low a budget to cover for this. Therefore everything in the movie seems shrunk, detached, to fit the budget.

So, it's a nice film to watch for cultists and horror fans, but not a great movie, almost not a good one.

Being a big fan of Korean horror (Oldboy, I Saw the Devil, Hansel & Gretel etc.) I decided to look at a few lists of people's 'top 10 Korean horror movies' and found that a little obscure film, that I'd never heard of, called, "Bunshinsaba" was number 1 a lot of the time (or at least near the top). However, I was disheartened to find that it had a low average score on IMDb, so I found it on Youtube (didn't want to risk buying it), hoping that IMDb was going to be proved wrong, but unfortunately it wasn't.

Bunshinsaba was extremely disappointing. I liked the creepy opening which immediately set the atmosphere and had me feeling for the main character, but after that it seemed to be incredibly rushed through so I found it hard to get into. There are a lot of ideas pushed into Bunshinsaba that are skimmed over in a flash and not allowing for any sort of character development, thus detaching you from the story. There's also no discourse markers to let you know that the film is going to move on to a different idea, it just goes onto a different scene and it's as if a whole chunk has been cropped out.

The ideas are also not wholly original. It relies on the long-haired white-face ghost were creepy in The Grudge and The Ring, but have become over-used in Japanese horror films, and now it seems the Korean's have started copying them. Although, at least they had a go at constructing a fresh story instead of remaking one! There are also a range of recycled and over-used ideas in ghost films, you could count the clichés on your fingers: We've got the vengeful spirit, possession, exorcism, a secluded town etc. All that have been done to death, and Bunshinsaba doesn't even try doing them in any new or exciting ways.

However, that's not to say that Bunshinsaba is a terrible film, because it's not. Its strongest moments lay in the flash-back sequences, which take upon a slower pace which is much better suited for the film. The back-story is also genuinely interesting, and I found myself gripped to those scenes. There is also some exciting moments dotted around the film, I just wished it had been more original and had taken a slower and more meaningful approach.

It also got a little too confusing at the end and I found myself, just leaning back and watching what unfolds without really knowing what's going on, because the film doesn't allow any time for the viewer to work it out. Bunshinsaba is an OK film and does pass the time on a rainy Friday night, but it should not be the main aim of your life to see this film. It's nothing we haven't seen before and haven't seen done more effectively.