23:59

It's not bad, but it's far from good, but as I love the curse/haunting horror theme, and alternative films, very pleasant to watch a Singaporean film, some small flaws, made for less demanding cinephiles to trash horror lovers, I liked it ....

This Singaporean horror has a concept and simply doesn't make best use of it. The movie starts strong but quickly stumbles into mediocrity.

It tells a story set on a military base about a group of young recruits and the supernatural events that transpire on and around the base.

It looks fantastic, considerably better than I would have expected and the writing is well above par as well. Sadly though it manages to be creepy in places the story is a bit of an incoherent mess and by around the half way mark it quickly becomes apparent that it isn't going anywhere good.

The ideas behind it though solid were clearly in the wrong peoples hands and instead of potential being met we have this messy little feature.

Watchable but ultimately fails on most fronts.

The Good:

Couple of nice ideas

Production values

The Bad:

Plot falls apart badly

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

It's not just Japan that likes their muddled inconclusive plots

The overall look of the film is good, actors are consistent and both sound and photography are better than films with such a small budget usually are. Pace and timing are its main failings but I think the local audiences were probably willing to overlook that.

Jump scares and all that. Is that something you look forward to? The story itself is intriguing to a degree. But overall this is as generic as you probably expect it to be. Now that is not necessarily a bad thing. But it also is not something that will challenge anyone who has seen a couple of movies (especially in the horror genre of course).

Acting is not a strong suit either, but the movie does more or less satisfy if you set a low bar and just want a snack. Not all movies have to be exceptional or fantastic. If you can dig that, watch it, if not you may feel this being a waste of time

23:59 tells the tale of some army cadets in training on an island who have the misfortune of running into a local ghost with revenge on her mind.

The strongest points of this film are the the unique army barracks setting (for a ghost story) and the attempt to develop the main character arcs.

A better execution of the basic concept would have given a vicarious experience of what it is like to be an army recruit under these circumstances. The gold standard for this kind of thing in my opinion is FULL METAL JACKET (1987). Unfortunately, this film largely fails on that front.

On the character development front, we have, among others, one character who goes from being a skeptic to a believer in ghosts, and another who goes from being a bully to an empathetic person. Unfortunately, the first seems rather like an endorsement of superstition, and the second failed to be pulled off in a way that seems authentic. At least I still had reservations whether the bully's remorse was sincere. That actor's wooden performance may have contributed to my impression.

Apart from these issues, there is also a problem with the overall structure of the movie. Frequent flashbacks add hints about what had happened, but they are introduced in such a clumsy way that one cannot help but think of them as film-maker contrivances, and that takes us immediately out of the movie. Also, the story becomes more confusing because of the way the film is constructed.

The ghost character is yet another variation on the "Stringy-haired ghost girl" archetype, called onryo, which, it seems, has been milked dry in Asian horror. Perhaps it is worth noting that a Singaporean film availed itself of a ghost originating in Japanese folklore.

It is really all too bad. The premise is fresh and with better execution could have yielded a decent horror flic. As it stands, this is not a good film.